McCain's Fundamentals Problem

By Dan Balz
John McCain has a fundamentals problem. It is political as well as economic, and it remains the biggest obstacle standing between the Arizona senator and the White House.

McCain didn't single-handedly create this problem but he made it worse Monday when, as Wall Street was melting down, he uttered words -- "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" -- that totally muddied the real message he meant to deliver. Barack Obama has hammered him at every stop since as a man out of touch with reality.

Were McCain known as a student of the economy, this instance of a badly delivered statement would matter little. Because he is known as someone who is not, it matters plenty. McCain has responded by ratcheting up his rhetoric about cracking down on Wall Street and Washington.

As with his Monday misstep, once again the message is mixed. Guns blazing, McCain is promising to ride into town to -- oversee the creation of a commission to study the problem. He is speaking out in favor of regulation but against a history of opposing a heavy government hand. He has expressed his outrage, but what is the balance he would strike between the old and new McCain?

In many ways, the opening to Obama provided by McCain's verbal misstep is the least of his problems. What should worry the McCain camp most is the intersection of the renewed focus on the economy and the underlying political climate that has created such difficulties for McCain and his party all year.

McCain's advisers have noted for months that the political environment could hardly be worse for their candidate. None of them has ever suggested that the political fundamentals remain sound. Quite the opposite.

President Bush's approval rating appears stuck close to its lowest ever levels -- hovering just above 30 percent. Nearly eight in 10 Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. The Republican Party's image is worse than the Democrats' and well below its levels when Bush won reelection four years ago.

McCain's party made some gains after his convention but it's not clear whether that was temporary or lasting. Four years ago on election day, the exit polls showed an electorate at parity between Republicans and Democrats. That's not likely to be the case this November.

Combine that with the economic indicators. The stock market's plunge has wiped out recent gains and more. The unemployment rate now stands at 6.1 percent and has risen a full percentage point since March. Four years ago this month it was at 5.4 percent and heading down. The economy has been shedding jobs monthly throughout the year.

In the past, the unemployment rate was the most sensitive indicator politically. Today both the jobless rate and the stock market can send shivers of anxiety through the electorate -- as they are this week. Nothing in all of that is good for John McCain's hopes of winning the White House.

Only once since World War II has a political party maintained control of the presidency for three consecutive terms, which was from 1981-1993. Eisenhower's eight years were followed by Kennedy's and Johnson's eight years, which were followed by Nixon's and Ford's eight years, which were followed by Carter's four years.

Voters would not give Democrats a third term after the Clinton presidency, despite a robust economy and a nation at peace. After the tumult of Bush's eight years, what might compel voters to reward the Republicans with a third consecutive term in control of the White House?

McCain has managed to make the best of this terrible environment. His pick of Sarah Palin proved enormously effective in the short term. His party appears newly energized, even enthusiastic about their ticket, even if they still distrust the leader of that ticket.

He has reinvented himself for the final stretch of the campaign -- or perhaps found a voice that had been missing throughout this election cycle. As in the primaries, he has been reduced to basics and they have served him well over the past two months. His best hope of winning is to make the campaign a test of character.

How long can he sustain all this? Absent external events, he was doing well. With the economic news of this week, the polls hint at a deflation in his position. The playing field has once again tilted slightly toward Obama, who now must take advantage of it.

This remains as competitive a race as many had forecast. National polls are tight. Battleground states are tight. But the underlying structure that has governed this campaign from the start has not improved. That is the real fundamentals problem for John McCain.

This problem did not start in 2002 or 2005. If anything, by 2003, alarm bells were ringing in the Treasury, and people understood that the decade long cheap home loans were creating millions of homeowners that technically were at best borderline high credit risks.

While house prices continue to go up, this problem is easy to hide, as you can continue to refinance easily. Once prices go down, if your house is worth less than the principal, the banks have to ask for more down payment to refinance --- that's how it's supposed to work. But there were people who already knew that this might be a problem as early as 2003, and the majority of congress, both republicans and democrats didn't want to do anything to slow down the ability of lower income americans from buying homes.

All you have to do is look around for the few legilators who attempted to address this in 2003 and 2005. They were all shut down, sometimes by their own party leaders.

What happened is that all the congress had to do was pull out the "Look, this creates housing for the poor, let's see you try to regulate that!".

And no president or public official would dare touch the hot potato. Some of the congress leaders may be looking the other way as the problem built up, but that does not mitigate the gross negligence of pushing banks to increase their lending to people who can't pay them.

As for people who want to make the bankers the scapegoat. Bankers are no saints, and deep down, a part of me would shrug if they get paraded up and down wall street in dunce caps and get tarred and feathered in the process.

However, as bad pumping the poison throughout the system was, the real question must be answered : who injected the poison of "Mortgages for bad credit risks"?

By what stick was the bankers coerced into making loans to people who didn't qualify for loans?

In 2004, Fannie Mae released a report showing that Countrywide's low-income portfolio went from $1B in 1992 to $600B in 2003. This was held up as a model for all other banks to follow, meanwhile, ever since Clinton revised the Community Investment Act in 1995, community groups like ACORN participated in annual reviews of banks and gave them ratings based on their participation in low income lending.

Any bank that refused to make mortgage loans to low credit risks were not allowed to merge or expand. The ones ACORN disliked the most were sued by the Justice Dept.

In this environment, the banks had to relax their lending standards, and Countrywide is the biggest player there.

As to Wall Street dreaming up this scheme to share the risk by creating Mortgage backed securities, that's a question of failure of risk assessment.

But the question remains, of all these bad mortgages, why was the loan given in the first place?

Mr. Balz can decry the state of the economy...and then head on up to his recently purchased vacation home in the West Virginia panhandle, perhaps to ruminate some more about the horrible economic fundamentals. Perfect.

I hope Dan Balz or another capable member of your staff can explain to me why McCain's role as a leading member of the "Keating Five" only 19 years ago has not been brought to the fore by the Obama campaign.

John McCain has done more flip-flops this year than an acrobat in the Ringling Brothers circus. A man who was once a great hero has become a joke, and his veep candidate is just another example that he doesn't believe his own rhetoric. If Islamo-fascism is the "transcendent challenge" of our time, why pick a veep who has zero experience on the issue (from among all the Republicans available, no less, including many who have worked on the issue since 9/11, like Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Jim Comey, etc.). Why haven't we even heard McCain mention it since selecting Palin? Its become obvious he has decided to do whatever it takes to get elected, with the thought that once in office he'll go back to doing the right thing. that NEVER happens.

The problem is not what Senator McCain said, the problem is Senator Obama's effort to play "gotcha" politics. We are now in a financial crisis, for sure. But John McCain was correct in saying that the US economy is fundamentally strong: We have a hardworking and talented workforce, innovative small businesses, lots of physical space to grow compared to Europe and Japan, the best universities and researchers in the world, lost of domestic energy reserves (if the Congress allows them to be tapped), etc.

150,000 American troops in the war torn civil strife in Iraq, daily car bombings and political murders, Two billion dollars per week going down the drain- and nothing about it in the news.

Why the blackout? American correspondents are virtually absent in Iraq. What is the reason for this? Could it be because that around a dozen of them have been killed by "friendly fire?"

We should be covering this nightmare war 24/7. Instead CNN has a channel totally devoted to the months long disapperance of a little girl. That is tragic- but so is the continuing deaths and injuries to our troops, and the insane economic damage that this continuing conflict is costing us.

Nancy Grace and the rest of our American news media, where are you when it comes to this ongoing tragedy in Iraq? All we hear is "lipstick," and lies. Wake up, there are critical issues being ignored.

We don't need to be listening to the lies from a former beauty pageant contestant and an old alzeimers poster candidate. They have nothing to offer which will help our country except four more years of the same old favoritism to their corporate lobbyists.

Sarah Palin continued her lies today about having more work done in America by Americans. As a candidate, she says that she is building a forty billion dollar gas pipeline in Alaska to bring "green, clean natural gas to the lower 48 thirsty states."

That is a lie. What is true, is that she signed, as Governor, a deal with a Canadian company for a $500,000,000 to study the feasibility of the project. The pipeline "if feasible" and it is probably not- due to the need to heat it, and overcome huge environmental safety problems- is at least ten years away, and won't lower the cost of energy to Americans. She simply lies about everything. She needs to "blink" once in awhile when telling these lies.

On another note: her old deranged running mate is getting more transparent in his total mental incompetence each day. This episode is truly embarassing- or should be- for McCain and all Americans.

"Late Wednesday night, news made its way from the other side of the Atlantic that John McCain, in an interview with a Spanish major news outlet, had made a series of bizarre responses to a question regarding that country's prime minister.

"Would you be willing to meet with the head of our government, Mr. Zapatero?" the questioner asked, in an exchange now being reported by several Spanish outlets.

McCain proceeded to launch into what appeared to be a boilerplate declaration about Mexico and Latin America -- but not Spain -- pressing the need to stand up to world leaders who want to harm America.

"I will meet with those leaders who are our friends and who want to work with us cooperatively," according to one translation. The reporter repeated the question two more times, apparently trying to clarify, but McCain referred again to Latin America.

Finally, the questioner said, "Okay, but I'm talking about Europe - the president of Spain, would you meet with him?" The Senator offered only a slight variance to his initial comment. "I will reunite with any leader that has the same principles and philosophy that we do: human rights, democracy, and liberty. And I will confront those that don't [have them]."

The implication seemed fairly clear: McCain was refusing to commit to meet with Zapatero, the "socialist" party leader, whose country is a member of NATO and intricately involved in many of America's global financial and national security objectives.

Already, several explanations are being offered to explain McCain's statements. As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo opined: "The great majority [of those who have weighed in] appear to think the McCain was simply confused and didn't know who Zapatero was -- something you might bone up on if you were about to do an interview with the Spanish press. The assumption seems to be that since he'd already been asked about Castro and Chavez that McCain assumed Zapatero must be some other Latin American bad guy. A small minority though think that McCain is simply committed to an anti-Spanish foreign policy since he's still angry about Spain pulling it's troops out of Iraq."

If, in fact, that latter group is correct and McCain was just putting voice to an adversarial stance, it could be as quizzical as if he didn't know Zapatero's name in the first place. Indeed, such a take on U.S.-Spain relations puts McCain in a far more hard-lined position than even the Bush administration, which has warmed to the Spanish leader after a rocky initial period. Indeed, the State Department's website touts the Zapatero government, which came to power in April 2004, for supporting "coalition efforts in Afghanistan" as well as "reconstruction efforts in Haiti" and counterterrorism tasks across the globe."

These two liars and fools are a potential disaster for the economy and for our relations with our global partners.

all you idiots talking about experience. with all the experience bush's and mcsame's experience, tell me how have they led the country so far? where was the experience when the iraq war started? where was the experience when the economic meltdowns took over? answer me morons numbskulls losers!!!!mcsames.

"Voters would not give Democrats a third term after the Clinton presidency, despite a robust economy and a nation at peace."

But they did. Al Gore won the 2000 election, and he let the entire country down by failing to fight for his victory. Meanwhile Democrats blamed Ralph Nader instead of the people who stole the election.

We could have had eight years of Gore, no war in Iraq, better management of the economy, reduced influence of the Christian fundamentalists, a Democratic president, house and senate - not saying everything would have been perfect, of course, but it would have been utopia next to the Bush nightmare.

Hey Anonymous !
You're right--ain't it grand, so many comments........ You know why conservatives aren't too b-r-i-g-h-t ? They don't use libraries. You see libraries are socialistic institutions and they want nothing to do with government paying for things--well wars, banks, bankrupt insurance companies are okay but not healthcare or education. From the outside looking in, I'd say the USofA is in a big 8-years-in-the-making mess. Now will you please let us drill on the North Slope?

Last time, it took three Republican presidents (1921-1932) to really destroy the economy in 12 years. Do you think this time we will be luckier to get bailed out only after 8 years of Republican presidency?

And this is why it's often said that Obama does not have the experience or judgement to be President - A leader/president should try to calm the market rather than agitate it further by pronouncing all kinds of doom and gloom messages. During a crisis you try to manage the crisis while keeping your head about yourself rather than running around like a headless chicken (like Obama is doing right now).
The situation is getting itself under control - Lehman's taken over by Barclay's, Merrill-lynch by BoA (hopefully smarter guys than the guys running Lehman and M-L) and AIG got gutted and bailed out by the Feds. This is perfect example of the Markets taking care of careless businesses, and the Government stepping in to avert catastrophy.

Economic fundamentals lets see no ression yet in fact 3% growth Obama does not understand fundamentals Mccain does 600,000 jobs lost sense jan lets see democrates have not allowed drilling for oil gas prices go up and cripple the economy and they have controlled congress for two years and when Republican held congress the dem's filabustered anwar housing see post above global warming the debate is not over what is the real truth about GW how many scientists are there on the planet the UN's IPCC say 2500 means the deate is over yet I hear their are 31,000 that may not agree Whats the truth before we go broke fixing something that may not be a problem wake up AMERICA WE NEED YOU NOW!!!!!

(While McCain has "joked" - "Bomb bomb bomb Iran." And if you need more evidence Obama is right - compare the situation in N. Korea - which improved after Bush finally agreed to engage - and the situation in Iran).

MORTGAGE CRISIS:

-March 27, 2008:

"Obama laid out six different areas where he would stiffen regulations of the financial system. He proposed relief for homeowners and the long-term unemployed as part of an additional $30 billion stimulus package, much like the one Clinton offered last week.

He said outdated government regulations have fallen dangerously behind the realities of modern finance."

"McCain did not propose any specific regulatory changes, but did say "regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital" should be removed to help institutions create larger buffers against losses.

"It's deeply troubling that John McCain is suggesting that the best way to address the housing crisis is to sit back and watch it happen -- which is just further evidence that he would continue President Bush's failed economic policies," said campaign spokesman Bill Burton."

-For two years, Obama has based his campaign on the idea of bringing change to Washington. John McCain has run on the message of reform for about two weeks. (Prior to that - he ran on "decades of experience in Washington")

Obama continues to provide complex solutions to the complex problems facing our Country. Quick and easy solutions may play well on the campaign trail - but after 8 years of Bush - the White House will benefit from a thoughtful and pragmatic politician like Obama.

The housing problem caused by democrates with their cronies in freddie and fannie back in the clinton days started the sub prime nightmare and one of those cronies is one of Obama's economic advisors the energy problem which caused the down turn in the economy 6.1 unemeployment caused by democrates get the truth out repulicans in congress need to start souding off so the people will get the truth mister media man lets see some real investigative reporting to get to the real story unless you are afraid of the democrates the underling story reads like a novel this country has been brainwashed by the media hiding the real story History will tell the real story about the Bush legacy but that will be to late we have less than 50 days to make this happen.

On December 21, 2004 Raines accepted what he called "early retirement" [2] from his position as CEO while U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators continued to investigate alleged accounting irregularities. He is accused by The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body of Fannie Mae, of abetting widespread accounting errors, which included the shifting of losses so senior executives, such as himself, could earn large bonuses [3].

In 2006, the OFHEO announced a suit against Raines in order to recover some or all of the $50 million in payments made to Raines based on the overstated earnings [4] initially estimated to be $9 billion but have been announced as 6.3 billion.[2].

Civil charges were filed against Raines and two other former executives by the OFHEO in which the OFHEO sought $110 million in penalties and $115 million in returned bonuses from the three accused.[5] On April 18, 2008, the government announced a settlement with Raines together with J. Timothy Howard, Fannie's former chief financial officer, and Leanne G. Spencer, Fannie's former controller. The three executives agreed to pay fines totaling about $3 million, which will be paid by Fannie's insurance policies. Raines also agreed to donate the proceeds from the sale of $1.8 million of his Fannie stock and to give up stock options. The stock options however have no value. Raines also gave up an estimated $5.3 million of "other benefits" said to be related to his pension and forgone bonuses.[6]

An editorial in The Wall Street Journal called it a "paltry settlement" which allowed Raines and the other two executives to "keep the bulk of their riches." [7] In 2003 alone, Raines's compensation was over $20 million.[3]

In a settlement with OFHEO and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fannie paid a record $400 million civil fine. Fannie, which is the largest American financier and guarantor of home mortgages, also agreed to make changes in its corporate culture and accounting procedures and ways of managing risk. [8]

In June 2008 Wall Street Journal reported that Franklin Raines was one of several politicians who received below market rates loans at Countrywide Financial because the corporation considered the officeholders "FOA's"--"Friends of Angelo" (Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo). He received loans for over $3 million while CEO of Fannie Mae. [5] Franklin Raines is currently one of Barack Obama's chief economic advisers.

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

We can see now that the Bush administration had accurately diagnosed the problem in the lending market and had a plan to address it. Reluctanly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac supported the plan. However, Democrats objected.

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

By the way two of Fannie Mae' s biggest players, Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines are now
two of Obamas biggest ADVISORS.

First, Obama's "brother" in Kenya is his half-brother. Obama hardly knew his father, so why should he be close to his half brother? How about Cindy McCain's step sister, Kathleen Portalski? Who DIDN"T get a penny from Cindy Lou's daddy. And Cindy Lou doesn't even acknowledge her. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93708729 But this article was on McBush's economic savvy, or lack thereof. Just consider his Keating Five background; and Phil Gramm who is his "economic" advisor. From Truthdig, Robert Scheer: Seriously, 20 minutes of Google searches should be sufficient to convince all but the dimwits among us that John McCain has been a master of the special-interest giveaways to Wall Street that enabled this meltdown. He voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. The two main bills accomplishing that, bills which McCain enthusiastically supported, were the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Gramm is former Sen. Phil Gramm, who was chair of the Senate Banking Committee when he acted as chief sponsor of both pieces of legislation. The same Gramm that McCain picked to co-chair his presidential campaign.

We don't like Obama because he is a liberal.
The reason you have to go into mental gymnastics to rationalize your world view is because you are forming your opinions on propaganda. Try reading more- it might help.

It is really not all that complicated. As the house prices were booming during 2002 through 2006, mortgage lenders became greedy and careless. They approved mortgages no matter how credit worthy the borrowers were. They figured if payments can't be made, the house can easily be foreclosed and SOLD AT PROFIT.

This Ponzi scheme continued until house prices got so high, more and more people could'nt make payments.

In the meanwhile, the mortgage lenders would sell the mortgage to Freddie Mack or Fannie Mae after taking their cut. Then Freddie and Fannie would bundle these mortgages into groups called tranches. These were then sold to banks & investors all over the world as highly rated bonds (cdo's). Since Fannie & Freddie were backed by US Gov't and since outfits like AIG sold insurance to guarantee principal & interest, those bonds sold like hot cakes.

As the sub-prime problem started getting bigger and bigger, these bonds started defaulting on interest payments. This process gathered enough steam so that every body realized the useless stuff they were holding.

Why Freddie and Fannie got so out of control? Well, look at whom they were making political contributions to. Highest amount was given to senator Dodd, who was chairman of the senate committee with jurisdiction over Fannie and Freddie. Guess who was the second highest recipient?None other than senator Obama!

President Bush tried to put better controls over the activities of Freddie & Fannie, but the senate banking committee under Dodd blocked his initiatives.

When enough of these bonds were recognized as junk, the insurer AIG got in trouble.

Boys and girls that is the story of greed and crooks and now you and me and the rest of tax payers are stuck with the bill.

It is really not all that complicated what is going on Wall Street. As the house prices were booming during 2002 through 2006, mortgage lenders became greedy and careless. They approved mortgages no matter how credit worthy the borrowers were. They figured if payments can't be made, the house can easily be foreclosed and SOLD AT PROFIT.

This Ponzi scheme continued until house prices got so high, more and more people could'nt make payments.

In the meanwhile, the mortgage lenders would sell the mortgage to Freddie Mack or Fannie Mae after taking their cut. Then Freddie and Fannie would bundle these mortgages into groups called tranches. These were then sold to banks & investors all over the world as highly rated bonds (cdo's). Since Fannie & Freddie were backed by US Gov't and since outfits like AIG sold insurance to guarantee principal & interest, those bonds sold like hot cakes.

As the sub-prime problem started getting bigger and bigger, these bonds started defaulting on interest payments. This process gathered enough steam so that every body realized the useless stuff they were holding.

Why Freddie and Fannie got so out of control? Well, look at whom they were making political contributions to. Highest amount was given to senator Dodd, who was chairman of the senate committee with jurisdiction over Fannie and Freddie. Guess who was the second highest recipient?None other than senator Obama!

President Bush tried to put better controls over the activities of Freddie & Fannie, but the senate banking committee under Dodd blocked his initiatives.

When enough of these bonds were recognized as junk, the insurer AIG got in trouble.

Boys and girls that is the story of greed and crooks and now you and me and the rest of tax payers are stuck with the bill.

justada55+: Yes of course we want to 'know' about her. That is why she is doing interviews, was in a townhall meeting today taking questions, and will be participating in a debate.
As to the article, the one piece of commentary I keep looking for is what is meant by 'fundamentals of the economy,' and why they might be considered sound. I'm a McCain supporter, but I doubt even he knew exactly what he meant by that phrase (and I agree, it was probably not what he even meant to convey). But nonetheless, the fundamentals, as they are traditionally understood, are sound. GDP is solid. We've had growth for four quarters in a row (true, not the growth any of us would like to see, but growth is far better then stagnation or decline). Unemployment is relatively low, especially on a global scale (or even compared to 30 years ago). Worker productivity increased again this past quarter. These are the 'fundamentals of the economy.' Workers, both white and blue-collar, don't necessarily appreciate those fundamentals, because they are broad-scale. Most people see only their own wallets, and feel the pinch when they have to tighten their belts, or worse, when they lose true value (e.g., in a home). It would perhaps be more appropriate if both candidates would change the conversation from economics as a whole (which clearly neither understands) to the role of the President in economics. The truth is that the President's role is mighty slim. The Congress holds the power of the purse. The Congress is largely responsible for regulatory authority and interpretation. The President's best weapon is that of the bully-pulpit, but the President does not set monetary or lending policy, tax rates, regulations or deal with any of the major tools involved in managing the economy. Those tools are the purview of Sec. Treas. (appointed by the President, but approved by the Senate and independent in regulatory decision-making) and other professionals as well as Congress. Neither candidate is capable of doing much of anything they have promised on the economy for the precise reason that neither of them would have any authority to do so.

That statement is taken out of context. Regardless, in crisis, you can panic, or stay level-headed and optimistic. That is McCain, a man who was optimistic during five years of torture in a Vietnamese prison camp. Obama needs to create panic and fear to be elected, hence emphasize the current crisis. A real leader calms the fears of the masses, not inflames them for personal gain. This episode is revealing on so many levels. McCain again demonstrates leadership, Obama does not. Read more about both candidates on www.honestjohnwade.com

Dan Balz: The voters in 2000 did elect the Democrats to a 3rd term. Not only did Gore win the total popular vote cast -- but more importantly -- he would have won Florida by more than 10,000 votes if they had counted ALL of the votes that were cast by Floridians.

It was the Supreme Court -- and the Republican Party -- that got George Bush inaugurated as President -- since they both succeeded in stopping Florida from counting all of the votes that were cast in that Presidential election.

That was only 8 yrs ago, Dan. Where have U been? Oh, I forgot -- probably out there cheerleading with the rest of the Wash Post journalists and editors for the neo-con USG war in Iraq.

yes there people, I am of the age of 87, and, as you see, can use the computer.

the other day myself and old man Karki, a Finn, well we wanted to see about the election this year. Karki can't vote.

So along comes the looker Palin, and I would think she is married, but she and the Milican are republicans, and are people who have the best interests of the American people at heart.

Palin looks like she knows how to go eye ball to eye ball with the goddamn bankers, who sold my own house only 32 months ago from under me when my wife passed. So Palin must understand this and lower the taxes related to beer sales. There is no reason for a man of my age to pay any tax, because there are few options left for me.

I am looking to get a dog, and I know Milcain is a dog man, and people who are kind to animals have my vote. I know Palin is a dog lover too.

How do we know the parties over? According to everything we've heard from the Republicans, as soon as AIG can get the checked cashed, they can start leveraging themselves to the eyeballs again.
Reform, then funding.

In answer to Dan Balz's question about why voters would reward the Republicans with a third term, the answer is simple: Religion. The Republican convention was not a political event; it was a prayer meeting and the new Aimee Semple McPherson is on the ticket. Thirty percent or more of voters still vote for (Republican) Christian Fundamentalism.

The fundemetals of the economy are strong. If they were not we would not have survived this mess the Democrats have created in the housing market. After the election when we have a Republcan president and a Republican controled Congress we will get the mess strightened out. If Obama wins and starts his giveaway programs we will be doomed!

Bush led the attack in Irak and in Afghanistan. Does anyone know the billions that have gone there? What has been achieved? Nothing.

Bush led the Republican laissez-faire team, Cheney, Rove, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Gates ... all heroes of the past - so where are they now? Bush flies to Texas (yesterday) in a 747, then 2 hrs later flies back to Washington in a 747 - empty plane with him inside. No problem with fuel price for W. And how much did the photo-op cost taxpayers?

And this very Republican group, as an explanation (maybe?), sends billionaire Lyne Forester de Rothchild(sic) into the media (Situation Room & Campbell, CNN) to accuse Obama?

The Republicans' image & "philosophy" (oops, sorry - they aren't creationalists, those Greek philosophers) is defunct. Like a chicken with its head cut off, firing senselessly in all directions.

EXCUSE ME -- THE VOTERS *DID* GIVE THE DEMOCRATS A THIRD TERM AFTER CLINTON -- AL GORE WON THE POPULAR VOTE! This mess and a hundred more like it would never have happened had he been President instead of George W. Bush.

Saying that Sarah Palin is frightening or scary is another Obama tactic to try to take creditability away from Sarah. I read about it on the blog on Obama’s web site. Don't believe me check it out yourselves.

Obama is DANGEROUS for America
Freedom of speech with Obama? Not likely!

I have never seen such vile and repugnant behavour. You may not agree with someone's opinion or their candidate, but if your only argument consists of calling people liars and foul names, it only shows how small-minded you yourself are...

When a significant hurricane is imminent, the number one reason residents give when asked why they are not evacuating is their faith that God will take care of them (like wind and rising water don't matter). Palin supports teaching intelligent design alongside the scientific theory of evolution in schools. How confusing for young minds! We have students believing that God created people in his own image when all the evidence points to our evolving from apes. The older generation may have been hoodwinked into believing the unproven fantasy of creationism, but today's generation can find out the truth in 20 minutes (by properly researching on the internet). It's time for religious leaders to give up the hoax and to stop corrupting the next generation. It is frightening to think that someone (Palin), who does not make a distinction between fantasy and reality, could be elected to any position in our government. Wake up, America!

In an "interview" with Hannity, Palin has redefined "fundamentals of the economy" to mean "the inventiveness and diligence of the American people." Journalists should not let this Soviet-style propaganda go unchallenged. Palin or McCain should be asked, if that is the definition, then was there ever a time in history when the "fundamentals of the economy" were not strong? Since Americans have always been inventive and hard-working, would Palin/McCain say that the "fundamentals of the economy" were strong before and during the Great Depression?
Or do Palin/McCain think that, during the Great Depression, Americans were lazy and un-inventive?

Great column by Dan Balz. The people who end up making the difference do not however own stocks, worry about the economy beyond their job and the price of fuel. McCain has many swing voters by default. They simply haven't warmed up to Obama, yet.

the real problem here cuts to one of the classic differences between republicans and democrats, one obama may now be able to exploit if he follows www.straightrecord.com/randomrants advice and declares, "it's regulation, stupid." in the past this argument would cause nothing by "mego" in the average voter, but now it just may catch on. mccain and his republicans have joined with the administration these past 8 years in either decimating regulations or practicing "aregulation," ignoring the ones already in place. there is no way to restore regulation in time to deal with the current crisis, but obama and a democratic congress could. remember back when american business pleaded for the administration to develop a package of environmental regulations so all of business could comply equally? didn't happen. sometimes, even greedy business sees the value in regulation.

“RUSH:”
I love that guy.
He's like a Wile E. Coyote that talks.
What's RUSH: all hepped up about?
“Why is this as close as it is and what's going on? Well, we always knew this was going to be hard. This is a leap for the American people."
So Obama thinks that it's a leap for the American people to elect an African American president. I'll admit he's got a penchant for stating the obvious.
What's RUSH: got to say about it?
“So Obama's got himself up here on a pedestal, "you," the bitter clingers down there, you dunce racists, you bigots, you slobs. You just don't understand brilliance in dictators when you see it.”
Yeah, that sounds like Rush, over-acting, over-reacting and putting words into peoples mouths. He does this all the time, that's his stock and trade.
I was hoping we were going to get one of his “Vast Left Wing Conspiracy” rants, I love those. I'm liberal, have been all my life. We've been kicked around like a football since Ronald Reagan took office, we can't even get enough shelters funded for the homeless but man when RUSH: talks...we rule nations, armies await our call, we corrupt king and commoner, we are insidious and are destroying everything American. In short, we rule!
Hey, was anybody else shocked when the Republicans turned into Socialists? Did anybody mention to them that if you would regulate the banks, you wouldn't have to buy them?
We just bought AIG, the biggest insurance company in the world...does that mean we're getting free health care? C'mon guys...we bought the dang company, don't we get something? A break on our car insurance...a little gas....something?

Corruption trial threatens frontrunner
Tony Allen-Mills in Chicago
IN THE summer of 2005, a 20-year-old Chicago student named John Aramanda arrived at the Washington office of Senator Barack Obama to begin a coveted summer internship. He was one of about 100 bright young Illinois students who passed through the senator’s office that year, gaining invaluable experience in the front line of a future presidential candidate’s national operations.
This week Aramanda’s name may return to haunt Obama. The student’s father, Joseph, has emerged as a central figure in the trial beginning on Tuesday of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a prominent Chicago political broker accused of a long list of fraud and corruption offences.
As a former friend and neighbour of Rezko, Obama was also a political beneficiary of the Syrian-born millionaire’s extensive fundraising operations. Central to the prosecution’s case against Rezko is a $375,000 payoff - called a “finder’s fee” - that is alleged to have been skimmed illegally from investment fees paid by the Illinois state teachers’ pension fund.
At least $10,000 of that money turned up in Obama’s campaign account through a donation by Joseph Aramanda, who according to prosecutors received $250,000 from the pension fund payoff and directed it to others at Rezko’s behest.
The payment to Obama was made a year before Aramanda’s son was awarded his internship. Obama’s aides have denied any connection between the donation and the internship, and Joseph Aramanda has not been accused of any crime. Rezko has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
Yet even before the first state witnesses begin to explain the complex financial dealings that federal investigators claim were corrupt, it is clear the Rezko trial could scarcely have come at a worse moment for the Illinois senator who has built his presidential challenge on promises of hope, integrity and change.
”.

Great column by Dan Balz. The people who end up making the difference do not however own stocks, worry about the economy beyond their job and the price of fuel. McCain has many swing voters by default. They simply haven't warmed up to Obama, yet.

Good article. John McCain discredited his "maverick" credentials when he reversed positions along the way on key issues and adopted, particularly on economic matters, policies of the Bush administration in addition to those like de-regulation that he has historically championed. When he took these on as his own, he brought himself a world of problems.

You make a valid point. It's also interesting to note that the Catholic Church has opposed every major scientific breakthrough in world history. Ignorance is bliss. It's a no-brainer that Palin, who is 100% anti-abortion, believes that global warming is not manmade and thinks that creationism should be taught in public schools

___________________________

But I wasn't talking about religion -we were founded on religious tolerance, but I meant on power politics.

In the last 150 years, there have been two defining moments which shaped America's role and behavior in world history: the Civil War and Wilson's war message -which ended US isolationism.

America was divided, deeply divided, but we ended up making the right decision. If we had taken the other path, there wouldn't have been an American century.

I really think that we are living another defining moment and we can't take a decision based on hatred, prejudices, and ignorance.

We must rationally, not emotionally, identify the good of the Nation. United we stand -even if, as I strongly believe, we are actually divided in two factions as never before in my lifetime.

"Congressional Quarterly reported today that Senator Harry Reid said the Senate, even while on break, will stay in “pro forma” session (something it’s done before), but this time to monitor the financial crises. With finger-pointing all around — to Congress, the Bush administration and the private financial services sector, Mr. Reid’s remarks about the scope of the situation caught our attention:

“No one knows what to do,” Reid said. “We are in new territory. This is a different game. We’re not out here playing soccer, basketball or football. … It is a multi-trillion dollar issue that is facing America, and we can’t do it on some time line that is unrealistic.”

Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, fired back: “Harry Reid’s despair and Barack Obama’s failed leadership is what’s wrong with Washington. Since crisis hit Wall Street, Obama has offered partisan attacks in lieu of fresh ideas or leadership. No wonder his party’s leaders says they don’t know what to do. If Harry Reid and Barack Obama don’t know what to do, they should not be so dismissive of a bipartisan commission tasked with discovery and reform.”

For his part, Senator Obama was out on the stump today, uttering extremely critical language against his opponent. Our colleague Jeff Zeleny sent along a new line of attack the senator opened up today during his third trip to the mining town of Elko, Nev.:

“Yesterday, John McCain actually said that if he’s president he’ll take on – and I quote – ‘the old boys network in Washington,” Mr. Obama said. “I’m not making this up. This is somebody who’s been in Congress for 26 years, who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign.”

To applause at an outdoor rally at a city park, he added the punchline: “The old boys network? The old boys network? In the McCain campaign — that’s called a staff meeting. Come on.”

Obama bought his property first. Rezko bought the property next door but did nothing to it. Obama wanted to extend his yard by a few feet so they asked Rezko if he was willing to sell them about 10 feet of their yard. The piece of land was value somewhere in the range of 40K - 50K. The Rezko's charged the Obama over 100K. The Rezko then later on sold the remaining land to someone else also at a profit.

Barack Obama lives in a Georgian mansion with 7 fireplaces that his slumlord, convicted corruption figure buddy, Tony Rezko helped him buy while helping a bagman who was laundering Iraqi oil-for-food program money

Obama's brother George in Kenya is living in a hut on less than a dollar a month. His brother doesn't even have an inside toilet. Obama could practically triple his brother George's annual income by sending him a $20 bill once a year. Or he could buy him an outhouse for twice that much.

McCain is old and he's awful. He's much too stupid to be president, seventh from last in his class and Caribou Barbie the Satan Slayer home schools and doesn't believe in evolution. No one who doesn't believe in evolution can lead the free world. We have enough religious fanatics in government to gag a maggot. Don't elect a 72-year-old soldier to lead the planet when it is melting before your eyes, not unlike your wealth!!

This is an amazing election year.
The number of people taking part in dialog is phenomenal. Of course, not all of the dialog is thoughtful and respectful, but the shear level of involvement is a wonderous sign.

I'm for Senators Obama and Biden. I am proud of what we are doing. Many different kinds of people have united to support these candidates. White cats, black cats, stripped cats, spotted cats, Fluffy cats, minx cats, fat cats, skinny cats. All cats.
If they win, the outside world will look at us with awe and respect. People will stand up and feel their place in time and look with hope for their children. Our own people will be stunned with their amazing achievement in this land- hand in hand with their neighbors. Our own people will step forward with hope onto that road that is their making and make their leaders lead.

Let's take back the party from Rove et al's failing strategy and above all, failing policies. True Republicans 2012! Send Sarah Palin back to her igloo.

Posted by: Robert | September 17, 2008 7:36 PM

-------------------

See...I like his attitudue...I have to admit...I liked Huckabee...down to earth...not too sure about his religious leanings....but he was better then McCain. If it wasn't for the backlash against evangelicals because of Bush, I think the Republicans would have taken him over McCain. Remember he held on in the primaries for awhile despite being under funded.

Eric has found my radar. Let's see.....
Watch our country go even further in the toilet for 4 more years just so Hillary can win the nomination in 2012. That makes perfect sense. Idiots like you are reason why this country has become become a joke to many abroad.

You make a valid point. It's also interesting to note that the Catholic Church has opposed every major scientific breakthrough in world history. Ignorance is bliss. It's a no-brainer that Palin, who is 100% anti-abortion, believes that global warming is not manmade and thinks that creationism should be taught in public schools-- represents the same wingnut fundamentalism of the Salem Witch Trials and the ignoramus redneks who support Duhbya.

The reason Democrats are stirring up the race issue is because it's dawning on them that it won't be Republicans who say "No Way No How No McCain" all the way up until they get in the poll booth, where they look around furtively to make sure nobody can see them, pull the McCain lever and breathe a big "WhoooWeeee! That was close!";in their heart of hearts they wouldn't vote for a black man to save their lives.

To counter this effect, Obama needs 15 points going into the election.

McCain needs Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvannia to win the electoral, and those states will be big examples of this phenonemon.

>> jcapan wrote: "Actually I would have liked to have seen them together. It would have been like the SNL skit. Funny how sometimes life imitates art."

Palin was praising her at first in stump speeches, but had to drop it because a lot of Republicans would boo.

It would be embarrassing for Clinton if Palin were some kind of star with a large draw, and the people were also booing her. It would be better to not see Clinton embarrassed or disrespected like that.

After that SNL skit I wonder if have acted like she's jealous of Palin now. That must be embarrassing, too.

How can McCain fix a problem that he won't admit exists? His assertion that American workers are the foundation of the US economy is simply wrong. They should be, but they're not. McCain and his party have little credability in making such statements after they've supported the shipping of US jobs south of the border and overseas--just to save a few bucks. The US economy is fueld by debt, from which corporations benefit.

Sen. Obama has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate

The real problem is not McCain's. The real problem is America's problem.

In all decisive moments in our history, a part of this Nation start to loose contact with the realities of politics and it's ready to let America sink because of their narrowmindedness.

In all these decisive moments, we have been divided in two factions. Call it union vs confederates, blue vs. red states, but at the end the faction of ignorance, of prejudices, of backwardness has never prevailed.

Perhaps Obama should return the millions he received in contributions from the mortgage companies and investment firms. He misrepresented the truth yesterday when he discussed his role in the stimulus package. He wasn't there to vote. He was absent as usual.

Consistently it's reported that McCain's own base is unenthusiastic--about McCain. This economy + McCain's lukewarm base = President Barack Obama and lovely First Lady Michelle Obama. America's image abroad will be burnished and we can begin to dig out of this Republican hell.

"The New York senator abruptly canceled an appearance at a rally protesting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after learning that Palin had also been invited to the event scheduled next week outside the United Nations. Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines said Clinton was never told that the Alaska governor would be there.

"A spokeswoman for Palin, Tracey Schmitt, said of Clinton's cancellation: "Gov. Palin believes that the danger of a nuclear Iran is greater than party or politics. She hopes that all parties can rally together in opposition to this grave threat."

WE KNOW WHY CLINTON CANCELLED

PALIN ECLIPSES HER SO BADLY... DRAWS OBAMA-SIZED CROWDS

CLINTON NEVER DID

HER OWN PARTY EVEN DUMPED ALL OVER HER & BELITTLED HER AS IF SHE WERE SOME KIND OF HALF-WOMAN, HALF-ROBOT FREAK & MARGINALIZED HER WITH SEXISM.

You know who wins, no matter what? Sarah Palin. If the ticket loses (as it probably will), she will stab McCain in the back and the blame will be pinned on him. And if we by some fluke win, she will have just about the same advantages she has now: a national springboard from which to frogleap McCain and other traditional Republicans.

We need to let this ticket lose and sink the neocons and the voodoo Christians once and for all. Take back the Republican party! Let's go back to the "fundamentals": conservatism and bi-partisan accomplishment for our American people.

An accurate comparison would have included only the bills Obama has sponsored that have been signed into law. Obama has had just two in his three years:[1]

S. 3757, A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 950 Missouri Avenue in East St. Louis, Illinois, as the "Katherine Dunham Post Office Building.
S. 2125, A bill to promote relief, security, and democracy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Posted by: Dowgyco | September 17, 2008 7:01 PM

-------------------------

Actually Dowgyco, Obama has done more in terms of legislation. Read the following excerpt below from an article in newsweek.

Obama served eight years in Springfield, and has been in Washington nearly four so far. In the Illinois state Senate, he authored about a half-dozen "major laws" on issues ranging from ethics to education. The best example of his leadership style was bipartisan legislation to require the videotaping of police interrogations, which is now a national model. Obama brought together police, prosecutors and the ACLU on a win-win bill that simultaneously increased conviction rates and all but ended jailhouse beatings. In Washington he has his name on three important laws: the first major ethics reform since Watergate; a much-needed cleanup of conventional weapons in the former Soviet Union, and the "Google for Government" bill, an accountability tool that requires notice of all federal contracts to be posted online. Besides that, Obama hasn't been around long enough to get much done.

McCain served four years in the House and has been in the Senate almost 22 so far. But he, too, has authored fewer than a half-dozen major laws. Trying to fix immigration counts for something, but nothing passed. So while McCain deserves credit for the landmark 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, the only other major law on which his office says his "name appears" (Palin's standard) is the "McCain Amendment" prohibiting torture in the armed forces. But that has little meaning because of a bill this year, supported by McCain, that allows torture by the CIA. Under longstanding government practice, military intelligence officers can be temporarily designated as CIA officers ("sheep-dipped" is the bureaucratic lingo) when they want to go off the Army field manual. In other words, the government can still torture anyone, any time. McCain caved on an issue he insists is a matter of principle.

The single domestic issue that McCain gets passionate about is pork-barrel politics ("earmarking"), the 200-year-old process by which members of Congress slip in goodies for their constituents outside the normal appropriations system. Earmarks account for less than 2 percent of the budget; the "Bridge to Nowhere" is offensive but amounts to the cost of a few hours in Iraq. McCain claims he has never sought earmarks for Arizona. This is mostly true. But the vast majority of all the bills he has sponsored in Congress have been favors for Arizona's Native American population. While the Indians deserve it, the difference from earmarks is procedural. Both amount to bringing home the bacon.

>> doobeedoobeedoo wrote: "Al Gore won the election in 2000. Ignoring the destruction of a constitutional democracy by 5 people on the Supreme Ct., shouldn't be ignored by anyone, let alone someone considered a respected journalist."

Al Gore conceded. Remember?

And the weaselly democrats let him get beat up in the press the whole time. He wasn't cool enough for him back then & he wasn't left enough for them. The Repubs fought like crazy to back Bush to win the count & Gore was on his own.

An accurate comparison would have included only the bills Obama has sponsored that have been signed into law. Obama has had just two in his three years:[1]

S. 3757, A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 950 Missouri Avenue in East St. Louis, Illinois, as the "Katherine Dunham Post Office Building.
S. 2125, A bill to promote relief, security, and democracy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Let's get back to "THE PIG WITH LIPSTICK" and the daughter she got knocked up!!!
Is she really going to "TRASH" her kid tonight on LARRY KING BARELY ALIVE? Stay tuned TRAILER TRASH,,,,it's JERRY SPRINGER 24/7!

You McCain supporters, after you're done bashing Obama and blaming Clinton for the current economic crisis, are you being honest with yourselves in the end?

Do you really think McCain has a clue as to what's happening here, let alone has a plan to deal with it?

Can't say I really like what's coming out of the Obama campaign regarding the latest and greatest financial crisis, it sounds like they're just a bit too happy to see us all suffer so they can cut down on McCain. And I'm not sure I've heard what they plan to do about it.

But it's a hard and cold truth that McCain is exactly the wrong person, and his party exactly the wrong people to solve these problems.

The republican philosophy did this, republicanism. Another attribute of republicanism is to refuse to admit mistakes.

How can you fix what's broken if you won't admit it's broken, and if you won't admit what you did to break it?

Al Gore won the election in 2000. Ignoring the destruction of a constitutional democracy by 5 people on the Supreme Ct., shouldn't be ignored by anyone, let alone someone considered a respected journalist.

And he was doing so well prior to that.

That destructin has led to so much. Be nice if a "journalist" for a well read daily would speak truth to power, truth to everyone! Why do you think things are collapsing? Not chance. Oh yeah, and the problem(s) didn't commence 8 years ago. It started about 3 decades ago by his ultimate influence: President RR......

Al Gore won the election in 2000. Ignoring the destruction of a constitutional democracy by 5 people on the Supreme Ct., shouldn't be ignored by anyone, let alone someone considered a respected journalist.

And he was doing so well prior to that.

That destructin has led to so much. Be nice if a "journalist" for a well read daily would speak truth to power, truth to everyone! Why do you think things are collapsing? Not chance. Oh yeah, and the problem(s) didn't commence 8 years ago. It started about 3 decades ago by his ultimate influence: President RR......

"By the way, in order to become a military pilot,you have to take courses in advanced
mathematics and engineering."

Posted by: George | September 17, 2008 6:28 PM

* * * * * *
I was a military (Navy) pilot back in the 1960s. Advanced math and engineering were not required. I happen to have had calculus only because I was a chemistry major. I served with English majors and so forth. Most of those pilots did not have what you just stated as fact.

EarlC - as an Independent, I can assure you that the vitriol is far, far worse from the Obama supporters.

cafugate77 - Yes, there are parts of Ohio that are hurting badly. There are also many parts that are not.

I'm far better off than I was 8 years ago, but I don't trust the religious right as far as I can throw them, hence I am independent.

I am, however, an optimist. I hear optimism from McCain, and pessimism from Obama. I don't want us to talk ourselves into thinking things are much worse than they really are. So yes, maybe I was already leaning towards McCain, but note the "leaning" part.

But, back to my point: read the comments on this post. I've been called "brain dead" a "stupid ass mofo" among other things by Obama supporters. Is it any wonder I want nothing to do with your candidate. Clearly his supporters want nothing more than to curse and yell at anyone who disagrees. Maybe Obama's youth movement isn't such a good idea after all. (Anyone else remember the youth from the 60's? Seem familiar?)

Ummm, actually, voters DID give the Democratic Party a third four years in the White House in 2000. The well-bribed Supreme Court (what Chief Justice's daughter got a totally undeserved high paid government job just after the election?) gave the election to the Republicans.

That said, it is really unclear what is going on today. Obama needs to make his case better. The media needs to stop giving Palin and McCain points for a "duck and hide" campaign strategy. (They should at least ask WHAT she is trying to hide).

My apologies...I wasn't implying it didn't require any skill. I saw the flight of the intruder. I'm sure the majority of pilots who flew A4 were talented..

But I know military pilots have alpha male personalities...McCain probably more so then others given his family background. I can't picture him settling for an A4 when he could have been flying an F4 phantom (providing he qualified for it). So with that said...plus the number of crashes...well I will let you draw your on conclusions.

"Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I tell you, the race business now is starting to really worry the Democrats and Obama. We have two examples, Jack Cafferty on CNN's all upset. Why is he not ahead anymore? It's about race, this is still a racist country. Kathleen Sebelius calls Republicans racist. The AP then changed the headline and the context of the story, take Republicans out of it, said some voters, Ed Morrissey tipped me to this last night from Hot Air blog.com. And then Obama is being praised. This is why we're in the catbird seat on this. Catbird seat is the wrong way to put this. That inspires overconfidence. I don't want people thinking that. But here, yes, look at the bumbling, fumbling, stumbling Obama campaign. Yesterday they have what handed to them on a silver platter? An economy that appears in all intents and purposes, the perception is that it's heading south and we're not going to bail out Lehman Brothers, we are going to bail out AIG, which means you people will be underwriting my insurance policy. How do you feel about that? ...

"At any rate, Obama has this golden opportunity to really hammer home the theme here that McCain, Bush, whatever, the current establishment, has just bollixed this all up. What does he do? He heads to Hollywood. I know it was long ago scheduled. He heads to Hollywood, he raises $9 million. It's all over the news. I thought Obama was about the future, not the nineties, and not the Clintons. I mean you go out and you grab Barbra Streisand as your headliner, people's memories of Barbra Streisand are at the White House when Hillary was away. He's got all these Hollywood elitists and the pictures of the Hollywood crowd being driven in their Bentleys and their Rolls-Royces and so forth, raising $9 million. This is not good. There is a bit of an implosion going on. Polling data, there's a polling outfit called 538, and it's run by a guy who is pretty much oriented toward the left, and in the Electoral College vote he takes a sample of all the polls that are out there, all the major polls that are out there and then runs an algorithm formula on his computer with certain weighting given to certain things, I don't understand it. But the point is, he's worried there because right now Obama is down like 52-47 in the electoral vote in terms of what the winning percentages of the presidential election would be, something along those lines or those numbers, and the race business coming up now and Richard Cohen, the Washington Post yesterday literally imploding against McCain.

"Normally I wouldn't mention Richard Cohen, but you put this in the cumulative stack of the crackup that's happening, the meltdown with the feminazis and the traditional liberal establishment media, and it ain't good out there. These people expected to be smoking McCain by 20 points now, and McCain's either up or tied in several key battleground states as well as nationally. And they know this. Even Obama last night at his little deal in Hollywood. Let me tell you what he said. This is from the New York Times. "A lot of people have gotten nervous and concerned. Why is this as close as it is?" This is what he's telling the people that gave him nine mill last night. "A lot of people have gotten nervous and concerned. Why is this as close as it is and what's going on? Well, we always knew this was going to be hard. This is a leap for the American people." What the hell's that mean? It means he's a leap for the American people. Damn right I know what it means. It means I'm not the guy that they see on the dollar bills, and it's a big leap for them to elect somebody looks like me, with ears like mine. I know it's a comment about his big ears.

"He also said we always knew that this was going to be hard, this is a leap for the American people. What is this "we" and the American people? We, who is "we"? His campaign staff? His elitist supporters? We always knew this was going to be hard? This is a leap for them, the American people. So Obama's got himself up here on a pedestal, "you," the bitter clingers down there, you dunce racists, you bigots, you slobs. You just don't understand brilliance in dictators when you see it. "

Now with the financial crisis you got McCain who together with Gramm his "former" economic advisor pushed through in 1999 the deregulation bill that loosened restrictions on the activities of banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies saying he will fix it.

Instead of smearing Obama, take the time to self-reflect and to reconsider McSame. Government bailouts. Job Losses. Housing Crisis. Healthcare crisis. McSame is the "Deregulator"! Voted with Bush 90% of the time. Did not Vet his own VP Pick. The list goes on and on. Do you really want MORE OF THE SAME!! Americans cannot afford more job outsourcing and slave wages. VOTE OBAMA & BIDEN for the change we need.

McCain couldn't even duck vietnamese rockets...Since when being a POW makes you a hero? Kerry was a hero for saving his brothers in arm lives and the republicans dishonorably made he look like a traitor.
Country first? Yeah right

I agree, McCain's fundamental problem is that the Bush administration is unpopular and with the economy slowing down, if not in recession, he carries that burden. He would be toast if Hillary were the democratic nominee, but instead the party went as far left as it could get to nominate a man who's attitude toward women led him to humilate Hillary rather than guarantee his election by selecting her as his running mate. His view toward Presidential decision making can also be summed up in his own words as "That's above my pay grade". McCain is blessed, in a bad year for his party, to have an opponent who is completely unfit to be President of the United States! If people think things are bad now....elect "The ONE" and find out how bad, bad can be!

mccain is trying to straddle the line and serve two masters, but it requires such a constant shift, he's going to suffer from whiplash. maybe this is the time for obama to take a page from the bill clinton playbook and tell his staff and the voters, "it's regulation, stupid." as www.straightrecord.com/randomrants points out, there is no difference between the parties more glaring than their positions on regulation. "aregulation" got us into this mess. regulation can't happen fast enough to get us out of the mess, but it just might sell in this election instead of being a "mego" issue as in the past.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fundamental question: Is economy really OK?
Housing market in tatters, Wall Street in turmoil, but still plenty of strength

The Associated Press
updated 1:22 p.m. CT, Wed., Sept. 17, 2008
WASHINGTON - Unemployment is at a five-year high. Financial firms that withstood the Great Depression are failing. Congress and a lame-duck president are gridlocked. So when John McCain declared that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," it drew ridicule from Democrat Barack Obama.

McCain later toned down his remarks, but his observation reflected a debate among analysts and policymakers about the economy's underlying health. Plenty of them think he's right.

Polls show a majority of voters put the economy as their No. 1 concern with seven weeks to go until the presidential election. Many economists believe we are now in a recession. Signs of economic distress are everywhere as housing prices continue to fall and the nation's financial system is pounded by a series of shocks, including the Federal Reserve's stunning $85 billion takeover of insurance giant AIG Tuesday evening.

"Strains in financial markets have increased significantly and labor markets have weakened further," the Fed said in a sober assessment Tuesday. But in deciding against lowering interest rates, the central bank signaled that it didn't see the economy's present situation as dire.

"When you have jobs being lost, industrial production down, personal incomes down and so forth, the economy's not in good shape," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight, a Lexington, Mass., forecasting firm.

Still, he added, "If the issue is whether the U.S. had a dynamic, resilient economy, and that the long-term trends are positive, I completely agree. ... It's important not to get carried away with gloom and doom."

And David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's, said that while there is a serious financial-sector problem "the fundamental economy actually isn't in that bad a shape." But, Wyss added, "I still think we're in a recession."

That dichotomy is at the heart of the dispute over McCain's remarks.

McCain declared on Monday that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," a phrase he has used before. After Democrats pounced, he backtracked and declared the economy to be in a crisis and said "fundamentals are threatened."

Democrats kept up their assault. "How can John McCain fix our economy if he doesn't understand it's broken?" asked an Obama TV ad.

The housing sector is in near meltdown, with new-home construction at a 17-year low, according to a government report issued Wednesday.

The financial sector is in turmoil not seen for at least a generation, with Morgan Stanley, one of only two remaining big U.S. investment banks, reportedly considering a potential merger with a larger commercial bank. Washington Mutual, a giant Seattle-based banking company, appears to be teetering, with the Federal Reserve looking to help broker a sale.

Yet the larger economy is plodding along, the numbers suggest.

After turning negative in the final three months of 2007 and growing at an anemic 0.9 percent in the first three months of 2008, the nation's gross domestic product — helped by government stimulus checks — grew at 3.3 percent in the April-June quarter. A relatively weak dollar has helped U.S. exports. High prices for food and other commodities have helped agriculture and the energy and mining industries.

A survey of CEOs by accounting firm PriceWaterHouseCoopers found that while the unemployment rate jumped to 6.1 percent in August, a majority of the top corporate leaders surveyed said they are not planning significant cutbacks of people, products or services. Instead, the CEOs are focusing on opportunities to improve efficiency and ways to emerge from the slowdown in a better position to compete.

That hardly means all is rosy.

"If all of this should lead to a tightening of credit, which it very well might, that would be a serious concern to manufacturers," said Hank Cox, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers.

Despite being the first U.S. chief executive with a master's degree in business administration, President Bush has left most of the heavy lifting in handling the crisis to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

"Adjustments in the financial markets can be painful, both for people concerned about their investments and for the employees of the affected firms," Bush said on Monday. He added, "In the long run, I am confident that our capital markets are flexible and resilient and can deal with these adjustments."

With the economy now at center stage, both McCain and Obama must try to overcome the fact that neither has much experience with markets or finance, nor do their running mates.

McCain may be at a bigger disadvantage because his party has controlled the White House for eight years — and voters often blame the party in power for hard times.

Still, new polling suggests the Wall Street tumult is helping McCain, at least for now. He and Obama now are trusted equally on the economy, with 34 percent of voters naming each as the candidate who would do a better job, according to an Associated Press-GfK Poll conducted last week. Previously, Obama had held a solid advantage on the issue.

Democrats also have been seeking to link McCain with unpopular Bush economic policies — something McCain has been pushing back against.

In a recent McCain television ad, an announcer asserts, "We're worse off than we were four years ago."

That not only takes a dig at Bush, but also evokes the memory of Ronald Reagan, who famously asked voters in 1980 if they were better off than four years earlier.

Reagan also had a ready definition of economic downturns. A recession was when your neighbor lost his job, and a depression was when you lost yours. Recovery, he liked to add, would come when then President Carter lost his.

AFTER 20 DAYS OBAMA FINALLY SERVED SUMMONS IN LAWSUIT CHALLENGING HIS CITIZENSHIP ELIGIBILITY TO HOLD OFFICE OF PRESIDENT

After 20 days of evading being served by a summons & playing games about who could accept service on behalf of Barack Obama as he flies around the U.S., a federal lawsuit filed against him alleging he cannot serve as President of the U.S. because he is not a U.S. citizen as finally been served on Barack Obama.

The U.S. Attorney & the Federal Election Commission accepted service of the summons on August 22, 2008, but none have taken action. Normally, the defendant(s) are expected to answer the lawsuit, admitting the truth or falsity of the facts alleged, before third parties react.

IF BARACK OBAMA IS INNOCENT OF THESE CLAIMS, WHY DID HIS CAMPAIGN GIVE THE SERVICE THE RUN AROUND & DODGE SERVICE, HOLDING IT UP FOR 20 DAYS WHILE THE ELECTION DRAWS NEAR?

The suit alleges that Obama cannot qualify for Office of President for 3 separate reasons:

(1) His mother, as Kenyan records & witnesses attest, gave birth to Obama in Kenya while on a visit because the airline refused to allow her to board a flight when her delivery was imminent (this is standard for airlines, to avoid in-flight births). 4 days after his birth, Barack & mother flew back to Hawaii & she registered his birth there. No records of live birth for Obama exist in Hawaii & no hospital records in Hawaii attest to his birth. For a variety of legal reasons, including the young age of his mother & the U.S. naturalization laws at the time, Obama would not be a natural born citizen if this is true. He would be a Kenyan citizen.

(2) The suit alleges that, even if he were a "natural born citizen", Obama lost his citizenship when his mother naturalized as an Indonesian citizen while they lived in Indonesia. Obama was registered as an Indonesian citizen, and as late as the age of 20, he used his Indonesian passport to travel to Pakistan for undisclosed reasons while American citizens couldn't easily travel there due to restrictions.

(3) The lawsuit alleges that for a variety of reasons having to do with requirements for Obama to reclaim his citizenship if (2) were true, were not followed by him. I.e. he hasn't taken an Oath before an appropriate agent of the United States after his mother expatriated and his expatriation followed hers. He also never declared that he was giving up his Indonesian citizenship. At best, Berg alleges, Obama is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Indonesia, & a President with dual citizenship cannot have an undivided loyalties.

The very best that can be said of Barack Obama, even if all of the most lost-in-the-fog-of-the-past facts are all unable to be proved, is that he is, unquestionably, a dual citizen of the U.S. & Indonesia.

Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the World.

Final strange twist: Since Kenya was a British colony in 1961, Barack Obama might be a BRITISH citizen if (1) is true. & he might have a dual British & Indonesian citizenship and no claim to U.S. citizenship if BOTH (1) & (2) are true.

By the way, in order to become a military pilot,you have to take courses in advanced
mathematics and engineering.

Posted by: George | September 17, 2008 6:28 PM

------------------

Yes, that is true George but usually when people go to flight school they all initially want to be fighter pilots. As you progress through school, they determine what type of plane you are qualified to fly. The fighter jet being the top and the bomber being at the bottom.

McCain flew an A4, which is not a fighter or the big bomber planes we see dropping bombs. Those planes were beyond his capabilities. The A4 is probably just a little better then the commercial planes people fly for recreation. By the way...McCain crashed 3 times before being shot down a fourth time. He then crashed a fifth time when he came back home. He crashed on his way to a football game. Normally when you are injured or crippled the Navy will not let you fly a plane. But good ole John McCain is not your typical navy pilot. He is the son of an admiral and the grand son of an admiral.

If he had been any other pilot without connections. He would have been booted out especially after the third crash. That is the one where he crashed into the carrier Forrestal. They claimed it was mechanical failure.

hmmm...sounds like dad and granddad must have been some naval officers in their time for the navy to bend over backwards for good ole Johnny.

Oh, I am sorry – I should ask what did he accomplished for his constituency when
he was in the Illinois state senate? Psst! Nothing.

WR. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.ONG:

And what can the great magnificent Obama do about the economy?
Oh, I am sorry – I should ask what did he accomplished for his constituency when
he was in the Illinois state senate? Psst! Nothing.
Ofcouse it’s understandable. Because to actually doing anything is way about
this windbags credentials. Not to mention his pay-grade

And what can the great magnificent Obama do about the economy?
Oh, I am sorry – I should ask what did he accomplished for his constituency when
he was in the Illinois state senate? Psst! Nothing.
Ofcouse it’s understandable. Because to actually doing anything is way about
this windbags credentials. Not to mention his pay-grade

"In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. 'She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious,' McCain admits."

McCain's behind the 8-ball on this one. Now that he's given up having any kind of consistent position on the financial crisis (being for regulation *after* he was against it for 26 years)--to go along with his expressed lack of knowledge in the area of the economy--he's left scrambling for what to do that will be of any help at all.

Compare that to Obama's stated specifics in the two-minute ad today. Added to his long-time opposition to privatizing Social Security and his often-stated advocacy for greater regulation in the financial markets, he clearly has the better plan.

It's time for the Republicans to admit they messed this one up starting back with Phil Gramm leading the charge to strip the government of its regulation and oversight ability back in '99.

And it's time for the adults to step in and take over. This won't change anything in the short run, but at least we'd have someone at the helm with some semblance of a plan.

John McCain has run an unfocused, make-it-up-as-you-go-along campaign. He's running on experience. No, wait, his VP has none. He's against regulation. He's pro-regulation. It's become increasingly obvious he has nothing to offer and his propensity for gaffes literally everytime his handlers allow him to talk to the media do not inspire confidence that he will be a commanding leader. He is Bush Redux only older and more out of it. Do we really want to re-live the last eight years with another embarrassment for a president? Do we really need more foot in mouth, knee-jerk decision-making resulting in incompetence and irreparable harm? And what if he dies? Are we really prepared for a President Palin? Anyone who answers yes to that question is lying to themselves and should spare the country their misguided vote.

Just b/c Obama went to Harvard means nothing. He has no experience, is sneaky, dirty and will take all of our money.

I cannot believe people believe this man when he says "I'll cut your taxes". Oh yeah? Then how will you pay for all your so called "programs" such as healthcare? And where will you get the money to pay the deficit?

One guarantee is, if Obama wins, we will no longer be the US of America. I do hope all the racist come out at the 11th hour and ensure he is not elected!!

(CBS) This story was written by CBSNews.com political reporter Brian Montopoli.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Barack Obama has emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, voters have been offered a preview of how Republicans will likely characterize the Illinois senator in a general election match up.

One recurring theme has been where Obama falls on the ideological spectrum.

In early February, Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant called Obama the Senate's "most liberal" member. Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, Newt Gingrich and others have echoed the charge.

Their evidence? A January 31st finding by National Journal that put Obama at the top of the list of most liberal senators in 2007.

Obama's critics don't always mention the fine print: Obama was found to be the 10th most liberal senator the previous year and the 16th most liberal the year before that, and other studies don't echo National Journal's findings.

Nonetheless, the "most liberal" charge is likely to be heard early and often should Obama emerge as the Democratic nominee, particularly as it appears at odds with his insistence that he will reach across the aisle and shift the political calculus away from the bitter antagonism of recent years.

"There's a lot of uncertainty about how he would govern and how he would put into practice what we think of as bipartisanship given what we know about his Senate record," said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on Congress.

Binder notes that Obama has spent his time in the Senate on "midrange issues," such as ethics reform and nuclear proliferation, where he could more easily find a Republican senator that would be open to working with him.

"He wasn't working on issues where you have hard Democratic vs. Republican divides," she said. "He seems to have very carefully chosen out areas where there were prospects of success and where he could find like-minded people across the aisle."

"He's been cautious, overall, as a senator," said David Epstein, a professor of political science at Columbia University. "He hasn't been a firebrand in terms of liberal causes, but he's staked out a leftist policy position. His record doesn't provide a lot of basis for the claim that once he's president he's going to win over Republicans and sort of bring everyone together."

"“Yesterday, John McCain actually said that if he’s president he’ll take on, and I quote, 'the old boys’ network in Washington.' I’m not making this up. This is somebody been in Congress for 26 years, who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign. And now he tells us that he’s the one who’s gonna take on the old boys' network,” he said. “In the McCain campaign that’s called a staff meeting!”"

"In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. 'She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious,' McCain admits."

"Voters would not give Democrats a third term after the Clinton presidency, despite a robust economy and a nation at peace. After the tumult of Bush's eight years, what might compel voters to reward the Republicans with a third consecutive term in control of the White House?"

The fact that Democrats picked the WORSE CANDIDATE FOR A TIME LIKE THIS!

I remember 8 1/2 years ago when this son of a former President ran for the President of the United States and could not identify the names of President of other countries. Everytime, the issues on economy came up or remember the Gore's lockbox on Social Security, he just chuckled. Well, the Red States voted a bozo. A year later while the twin towers were burning, he was in a kindergarden class reading an inverted kiddie's book, the bozo was clueless on what was going on. Today, there was a financial meltdown in rescuing his financiers at the Wall Street, he was playing golf and as usual the bozo was good on interviews. His counterpart is the temperamental hero nowadays he was clueless too, on what to do? - to rescue or not to rescue Big Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers. No way, no new taxes, just go to the next schemer, Bill Williumstad protege' of Greenberg of AIG. Mr. Greenberg was sued and exposed by former Gov. Spitzer NY for fraudulent accounting. Yesterday Mr. Paulson did what has to be done by bailing out AIG for $ 85B to save the world economy. Guess what? The day later it was the revenge of the ordinary people with 401 K's, small business owners totally lost confidence of Dubya and bozo policies w/ -450. AIG stock price of 70 per share few months ago went down to 3 dollars yesterday further sank to 2 bucks with Uncle Sam's money. That's what happens when you put an unqualified bozo in the highest position of the land. He was good only for PR while his VP was a Neo-con both were clueless why small investors preferred to sell than trust their word. Karl Rove, please help! McCain asserts again: No earmarks, no deregulation, we'll reform (our friends) Hahaha...I think that's sign of senility when one is not sure what to say next. Karl Rove, please help. Smart Rove walks away, "Too late buddy, you are on your own."

GOP REPUBLICAN Congress resisted tougher regulation and permitted WALL STREET to run out of control and obscenely high LEVERAGE (OBSCENELY HIGH BORROWED MONEY) RATIOS perpetrating intentional fraud against the American People.

GOP REPUBLICAN WALL STREET leaders intentionally deceived customers and lenders into taking hazardous risks for short-term rewards regardless of the long-term dangers to the American People.

Mortgages went bad. The powerful high leverage went into reverse. Losses eroded firms' capital bases and raised doubts about their survival.

Financial firms took major stupid and wasteful risks that severely damaged the American Economy and impeded economic recovery.

GOP REPUBLICAN STOCK MARKET $ TRILLION FRAUD has deepened consumers' pessimism, fear and reluctance to spend. There may be more failures of FINANCIAL FIRMS.

According to the MBA, 6.4 percent of mortgages are delinquent to some extent, and 2.75 percent are in foreclosure. During the Great Depression, according to Wheelock's research, more than 50 percent of home loans were in default.

Moreover, MBA data show that today's foreclosures are concentrated in that small fraction of U.S. homes financed by subprime mortgages. Such homes make up only 12 percent of all mortgages, yet account for 52 percent of foreclosures. This suggests that today's mortgage difficulties are probably a side effect of the otherwise happy fact that, over the past several years, millions of Americans of modest means have come to own their own homes for the first time.

There should be some published standards as to who can claim to be a 'conservative'.

Spend like crazy, open up to China (1972), nationalize insurance companies, increase bureacracy in the department of Education after promising to get rid of the department, increase the role of the IRS after holding hearings during the Clinton administration on the 'abusive IRS, rejecting the American Accounting Association's guidance on accounting for stock options, the list goes on and on.
Yet these guys claim they are 'conservatives'.

To be fair, you have to look at all the garbage that we Obama supporters have had to endure since Queen Sarah hit the road. You have not seen vitriol, sarcasm, and ridicule from us! Most of us Obama supporters have to live with the hated "liberal" attached to our names. Think about this.

I leave with the evidence: compare the Democratic convention to the Republican convention. The differences were astonishing. One gave you true bipartisan flavor. The other continued to push the great divide. A clue, the best convention actually had the far larger attendance.

I was born and raised in Ohio; Dayton to be exact. I left in 1979 to pursue my career. I still get back there several times a year, as my family is still there.

I know that Ohio is hurting...badly. Dayton is the 4th fastest FALLING city in the country. The industry that was there when I grew up has all dried up and left town.

It amazes me that you can sit there and say you're voting for John McCain...especially for the reasons that you gave. You apparently don't get around the internet much, do you? If you did, you would know that it is indeed the right-wing whacko republicans that win the "fear, smear, spew and lie war" hands down. When you walk into that booth on November 4th and pull the lever for John McCain, you might as well turn out the lights on Ohio on your way out. Most likely, you planned on voting for McCain anyway, and just want to stir up more dust.

They say you get the government you deserve. Well Brian...have fun working the counter at McDonalds, because that's where you'll be stuck.

Corruption trial threatens frontrunner
Tony Allen-Mills in Chicago
IN THE summer of 2005, a 20-year-old Chicago student named John Aramanda arrived at the Washington office of Senator Barack Obama to begin a coveted summer internship. He was one of about 100 bright young Illinois students who passed through the senator’s office that year, gaining invaluable experience in the front line of a future presidential candidate’s national operations.
This week Aramanda’s name may return to haunt Obama. The student’s father, Joseph, has emerged as a central figure in the trial beginning on Tuesday of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a prominent Chicago political broker accused of a long list of fraud and corruption offences.
As a former friend and neighbour of Rezko, Obama was also a political beneficiary of the Syrian-born millionaire’s extensive fundraising operations. Central to the prosecution’s case against Rezko is a $375,000 payoff - called a “finder’s fee” - that is alleged to have been skimmed illegally from investment fees paid by the Illinois state teachers’ pension fund.
At least $10,000 of that money turned up in Obama’s campaign account through a donation by Joseph Aramanda, who according to prosecutors received $250,000 from the pension fund payoff and directed it to others at Rezko’s behest.
The payment to Obama was made a year before Aramanda’s son was awarded his internship. Obama’s aides have denied any connection between the donation and the internship, and Joseph Aramanda has not been accused of any crime. Rezko has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
Yet even before the first state witnesses begin to explain the complex financial dealings that federal investigators claim were corrupt, it is clear the Rezko trial could scarcely have come at a worse moment for the Illinois senator who has built his presidential challenge on promises of hope, integrity and change.

I believe that the Democratic party and Republican party exist for a reason.

They balance each other out. I don't believe there are times when Republicans need to be in office. And there are times when Democrats need to be in office. When Bush senior was in office, we went through the first Gulf war. While only time will tell but I think that event needed to happen. I think Bush senior was a better person to handle that then the other person. When Clinton came into office, I think he was needed to lift the economy and wipe out the deficit, which he did by the way. Believe or not, I actually think Bush junior was better then Kerry. Kerry was a smart guy but the feeling I got from him was a frat boy who just wanted to add the white house to his list of accomplishments.

I think in today's time...the pendulum has to swing the other way now....balance. So I think the democrats need to be in office now.

It may sound silly but think about it. The world does not trust the USA. They think we are nation of stupid people who look out only for ourselves. And like it or not...The world united is a bigger market place then the USA.

By electing Obama, we are showing the world the USA is being re-branded. This way the world no longer has the excuse to not deal with the USA on the basis that they can't trust us.

>> jcapan wrote: "AsperGirl: I agree with most of what you said with the exception of that McCain has the solution. The problem with McCain is that he doesn't know what he is talking about."

He's not as good on the economy as he is on other things that he's worked on. Senators specialize & he's not a banking, finance & trading guy at all. It's definitely his weak point & he didn't come out quickly with a plan & state it very confidently.

>>"He use the shot gun approach by taking so many different stances on a topic that sooner or later he may get lucky and hit the right solution."

This is a complex systemic problem. There are a bunch of things that have to be done. Stiglitz' article (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/17/stiglitz.crisis/) is pretty good on what has to be done to fix the system to avoid future problems.

>>"First he said the fundamentals are fine then he says we are in a crisis. What is he going to say tomorrow if the market goes up a 1000 points. "Uh...the fundamentals are strong and when I said we were in a Crisis...I meant that without the american workers we would be in a crisis."

LOL. The only reason why he backpedaled was that he got hammered by the press and the Obama camp.

But McCain isn't good enough as an economic expert to make that kind of bold opinion statement if he's not prepared to defend them and smack down any criticism. Since he can't do that, he should never have said that.

I can't imagine why he's clung to Gramm for so long. That is really out of touch. He should never have been getting advised by Gramm at all this year, to get his head filled with all that cavalier verbiage.

you relentlessly accuse Obama and Democrats of supporting lending practices for the poor (which may or may not be true, but it very well may be), but that's not the problem, it's the predatory sub-prime loans that brokers would crank out and sell off to other firms. The buyer can no longer make their payments when the interest rates start going up, and the firms that bought up all those mortgages ate it.

If you learned anything in that paragraph, you can take a seat and can it.

Whenever someone insults liberals or conservatives as a whole, you can be sure they're a dittohead loser.

McCain's momentum, his bounce, disappeared a week ago. And Palin is already seen as a laughingstock. Obama added 500k people to his donor list and pulled in $66m in August. He's still ahead in electoral polling. He'd be elected if the election were today.

The media only shifts to the next story when they're ready to. Fact is, McCain and Palin have had 2 weeks of bad news, and the recent economic events will only hurt them more.

McCain you are pathetic. I once admired you, you once appeared to be honorable, now you are simply a lying and pandering. Your campaign is actually counting on the American people being stupid (why else would you repeat lies that are outed as lies?).

Until about 48 hours ago, for the past 26 years you were the champion of deregulating investment banks, etc. Now that your policies, and those of your boss George Bush and his boss Dick Cheney, have brought us to the brink you suddenly agree with Obama that the economy is in shambles.

When McCain said "The fundamentals of our economy are strong", he meant the fundamentals of his and Cindy McCains finances. He basically said we still have our 8 or 9 or whatever number of houses, our millions which are in banks in some small islands outside the United States are not affected.

It hasn't even been two days since he uttered the words, McCain and Palin are now dancing around his words saying oh he meant something else. Does McCain have a backbone to stand by his words. I guess not. I don't see any signs of 'maverick' in him. A man is primarily judged by his words. If he can't stand by his words he is less of a man. Now he wants a woman Sarah Palin to interpret his words for him. Is that why he chose Sarah Palin. As a fixerupper of his mistakes.

McCain has become so old that he has no spine to stand by his words. How is he going to deal with the rest of the world as a president. He will probably ask Sarah Palin to explain what he means to foreign dignitaries.

For those of you who still cling to the fantasy that Barack Obama is "about
change," you should note how he, or his minions, want nothing to do with
reforming politics in Illinois, perhaps the most corrupt state in the Union.
"Throughout his political career, Barack Obama has fought for open and honest
government," proclaims his campaign Web site. Apparently, no longer. When the
Democratic presidential candidate--now his party's industrial-strength voice for
our deliverance from political corruption everywhere--was asked by a reformer if
he would help get his political mentor back home to get off the dime and move
the most minimal of state ethics legislation toward passage, the Obama campaign
sent word back that amounted to a "no."
State Sen. Emil Jones (D-Chicago) is the Chicago machine politician who might
have been most instrumental in jump-starting Obama's political career. Now, as
Illinois Senate president, Jones is the one sitting on the reform legislation,
refusing to call it for an expected favorable vote before it officially dies of
neglect.
Jones is the pal of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, no friend of reform, who used his
amendatory veto power to change the legislation after it passed both houses so
that Jones would get another chance to kill it.
If all that's confusing, welcome to Illinois politics, where intricacy is the
best camouflage for chicanery. Suffice to say, neither Blagojevich nor Jones is
working for reform.
So, along comes Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political
Reform, thinking that now might be a good time for Obama to parlay his
friendship with Jones to do a good deed: Won't you intervene with Jones and try
to get him to call the Senate back into session to get this law passed? "[T]his
is a place [Obama] could come in and quickly clean up some of the damage and
serve his state," she told the Chicago Sun-Times. After all, her group and Obama
worked together during those halcyon days when he actually supported reform in
Illinois, so maybe he'll be receptive to a plea to intervene on behalf of
Illinois folks who have been getting gouged for years by the likes of Jones. "A
30-second phone call to the Illinois Senate president could yield huge dividends
to this state," she said.
In response, Obama's campaign issued an oozy statement reaffirming Obama's
alleged commitment to reform, while getting no more specific than urging
everyone to get together and love one another right now. What Canary was asking
Obama for wasn't all that much. Maybe a 30-second phone call to back up his
usual pap of, "Look, ah, I've, ah, always been for, ah, reform." For most
people, the reform that we're talking about is so basic that they might ask,
"You mean it's not illegal already?"
The legislation would make illegal the widespread abuse called pay-to-play
politics, by which companies doing business with the state contribute to the
state official in charge of ladling out contracts. The new law wouldn't let you
do it if you have more than $50,000 in state contracts, which, even at that,
leaves open a nice loophole. In Illinois, this is a huge leap forward from how
things are done. Blagojevich, who has reaped bundles of cash from state
contractors, could be one of the pols most jolted by the prohibition. That
explains why he rewrote the legislation in a way that would make it ineffective
and why the House overwhelmingly rejected his changes.
Jones now is the only one standing in the way of the reform, with Obama
abetting.
Here's another example of how Obama has revealed himself to be a creature of the
Chicago machine. Who can forget his silence when he could have affirmed his
reformer credentials by endorsing Democrat Forrest Claypool over machine
creature Todd Stroger as Cook County Board president? When things got too hot,
Obama severed his ties from his racially inflammatory pastor, Rev. Jeremiah
Wright Jr. That's not too hard; you can always find another pastor.
But betraying your political godfather(s) in Chicago and Illinois is an entirely
different matter. Especially if you lose the presidential election and return to
being just another senator from Illinois. Cutting his ties with the corrupt
Chicago machine is one bridge you will not see Obama burn. Not now, not ever.
Agent of change, my foot.
Dennis Byrne is a Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist. dennis@dennisbyrne.net.

They leave out the part about stopping Wall Street from running like a casino. A liberal will write 20 paragraphs about a sentence taken out of context.

Bush asked the Democrats to add oversight 5 years ago, and they refused. Democrats wanted a catastrophic failure, and they were paid well to go along. The investigation needs to start now. Obama was against oversight because they were getting rich, and planned for socialism. Vote MCain to end the liberal bastion of thieves.

I just read that Palin has ordered her staff not to comply with supoenas and ignore the Alaska legal system. Sounds more and more like Bush every day! A second rate cowboy governor who thinks they are above the law and packs their administration with cronies and classmates.

McCain says that "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." When pressed on this statement, he said that he was talking about the American worker. Give us all a break.

The American worker is the last person that McCain and his ilk want to deal with. Being independently wealthy, McCain has no clue why the minimum wage is so important to America's working poor. The working poor suffer every time there is one tick in inflation.

There will be a day when McCain will understand the fundamentals rather than using his own "smart" definition. In reality, after all of these years in Congress, McCain still has no clue. Maybe we know now why he was the "leader of the troublemakers" at Annapolis and near the bottom of his class. To give people another clue, Palin is no intellectual heavyweight either. The more we hear about her, the more she sounds like McCain's clone.

It is a shame that Senator Obama was one of the few who had the courage to stand up to both parties. He was one of the few to warn democrats and republicans that the deregulation bought on by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act would be a disaster. Time has showed he is right. Senator Obama was one of the few to tell democrats and republicans that war in Iraq would be a costly mistake. Time has show he was right again. It is good to see that we have a man of good judgment running for president. It is also a shame that it took us 28 years of Senator McCain's poor decision making and lobbyist corruption to get to this point.

To all the left wingers posting here, let me say just one thing: you just cost Obama 2 votes here in the Buckeye state. Both my wife and I are sick and tired at the vitriol you continue to spew here and on every other website with a comment section. We've come to the unmistakable conclusion that if Obama's supporters are like you folks... we want nothing to do with your candidate!

It is a shame that Senator Obama was one of the few who had the courage to stand up to both parties. He was one of the few to warn democrats and republicans that the deregulation bought on by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act would be a disaster. Time has showed he is right. Senator Obama was one of the few to tell democrats and republicans that war in Iraq would be a costly mistake. Time has show he was right again. It is good to see that we have a man of good judgment running for president. It is also a shame that it took us 28 years of Senator McCain's poor decision making and lobbyist corruption to get to this point.

Both of these guys are going to have a hard time fixing Bush's mess. But Obama seems like a nicer guy, and smarter, and has better judgment, and is more honest, and has real grass roots support, and has values more in line with the average American, and is a better speaker, and is a fantastic writer and has a more realistic world view, so I think I'll go with my gut instinct and vote for him.

OK, I am glad you asked, these are some of Sen. Obama accomplishments:

he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

"McCain, who appeared on MSNBC this morning, said his first priority is addressing the "alphabet soup of regulatory agencies," which he said were designed for the 1930s.

"Now we have an instantaneous financial system that's global in nature and it's not compartmentalized," he said. "Look at the Stock Exchange today as to what it was even 20 or 30 years ago. So you've got to fix that and also, very frankly, people were asleep at the switch."

One Basic economic fact you need to know:
The government takes. It takes money. It takes property. It produces nothing. It does not earn anything.

It re-directs wealth according to the whims
of a few powerful people in Washington(elected and unelected).

You think $85 billion for AIG is a lot?

Before Jimmie Carter, there was no Depts' of Education and Energy. We are spending $500-600 billion combined each and every for these two behemoths. Are we getting our money's worth? Who cares?

It does provide some necessary services for sure. Unlike private industry services,however, there is no competition.
So there is no economic referendum which would demonstrate(and kill off) whatever
services are the least needed or no longer justified or necessary.

What is a billion dollars?

If you spent $1000 a minute 16 hours a day(I'm allowing 8 hours for sleep, eating, etc.) it
would take over a thousand years to spend a billion dollars!

There is also the problem of waste and inefficiency. All these things
can only be addressed by putting constraints on governmnet income(taxes)
and through legislation, eliminating or reducing unneeded programs and thereby feeding
capital to the private sector.

Government has grown to be such a large sector of the economy that it is
a balancing act to get it under control. The beast has to be tamed,though.

One example is post-high school education. There is a legitimate need.
However, in large part because of government largesse we are
allowing students to access to higher education who couldn't even
get into college in most other industrialized(and even third world) countries.
And there is evidence that because of government policies, some of
our best and brightest students are not getting the kind of challenging education
in high school that they need.

Government has grown to be such a large sector of the economy that it is
a balancing act to get it under control. The beast has to be tamed,though.

GEE WONDER WHY OBAMA LEFT THIS OFF HIS RESUME
FIRST TIME HE SQUANDERED HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS!

Obama's Lost Annenberg Years Coming to Light
By Thomas Lifson

The cloak of media invisibility is slowly beginning to lift from Barack Obama's most important administrative leadership experience, helming an expensive educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any measurable academic gains, according to the project's own final report.

Add in the fact that former Weatherman and admitted terrorist William Ayers (whom Obama described in the Philadelphia debate as merely a "neighbor") was head of the operating arm of the CAC, working with Obama on distributing scores of millions of dollars to grantees in the wards of the city, and you have a topic that the Obama campaign wishes to avoid at all costs.

A compliant media has averted its eyes so far. A timeline of Obama's career from George Washington University omits it....

The four plus years (1995-1999) Barack Obama spent as founding chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) represent his track record as reformer, as someone who reached out in a public-private collaboration and had the audacity to believe his effort would make things better. At the time he became leader of this ambitious project to remake the public schools of Chicago, he was 33 years old and a third year associate at a small Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.

This was a big test for him, his chance to cut his teeth on bringing hope and change to the mostly minority inner city school children trapped in Chicago schools. And he flopped big time, squandering lots of money and the time of many public employees in the process.

I agree with most of what you said with the exception of that McCain has the solution.

The problem with McCain is that he doesn't know what he is talking about.

He use the shot gun approach by taking so many different stances on a topic that sooner or later he may get lucky and hit the right solution.

First he said the fundamentals are fine then he says we are in a crisis. What is he going to say tomorrow if the market goes up a 1000 points. "Uh...the fundamentals are strong and when I said we were in a Crisis...I meant that without the american workers we would be in a crisis."

I agree with most of what you said with the exception of that McCain has the solution.

The problem with McCain is that he doesn't know what he is talking about.

He use the shot gun approach by taking so many different stances on a topic that sooner or later he may get lucky and hit the right solution.

First he said the fundamentals are fine then he says we are in a crisis. What is he going to say tomorrow if the market goes up a 1000 points. "Uh...the fundamentals are strong and when I said we were in a Crisis...I meant that without the american workers we would be in a crisis."

I'm not an economist, but I'd say that when Wall Street tanks like it has over the last 72 hours... the fundamentals of the economy are not strong. Bush's "ownership economy" just got pwned. I'm voting for Obama.

I agree with most of what you said with the exception of that McCain has the solution.

The problem with McCain is that he doesn't know what he is talking about.

He use the shot gun approach by taking so many different stances on a topic that sooner or later he may get lucky and hit the right solution.

First he said the fundamentals are fine then he says we are in a crisis. What is he going to say tomorrow if the market goes up a 1000 points. "Uh...the fundamentals are strong and when I said we were in a Crisis...I meant that without the american workers we would be in a crisis."

I agree with most of what you said with the exception of that McCain has the solution.

The problem with McCain is that he doesn't know what he is talking about.

He use the shot gun approach by taking so many different stances on a topic that sooner or later he may get lucky and hit the right solution.

First he said the fundamentals are fine then he says we are in a crisis. What is he going to say tomorrow if the market goes up a 1000 points. "Uh...the fundamentals are strong and when I said we were in a Crisis...I meant that without the american workers we would be in a crisis."

Let's face it, McCain and the Republicans should be history after this election. McCain has had to adopt Obama's message of change. McCain has had to leave every principle that he has in the trash pile.

If McCain were a witness in a trial and decided to change his testimony, he would be hard pressed to prove that his new testimony is indeed the correct story. After telling a story once under oath, it is hard to change the story. McCain finds himself in such a position. For years he has been for deregulation. Some bloggers suggest that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were heavily government regulated. This may be so, but one has to also remember the environment in DC from 2000-2006 -- no oversight. The Republican Congress rubber-stamped Bush's programs and policies and fell asleep at the switch of Congressional oversight. When the Democrats stepped back into positions of power in January 2007, they reinstated oversight in many areas. However, it is really difficult to round up the horses once the barn door has been left open for 6 years. Iraq and other pressing matters have been occupying a lot of time. The country wanted the Iraq War resolved and our troops back home.

McCain has no clue what to do. I'll still stick with Obama. He has the intellect and is willing to do the heavy lifting to try to fix things. When people get over their prejudices and realize that there are really tough problems in our land, I pray that they go with a visionary with real solutions. Barack Obama is the leader of a team of dedicted people who will help see us through this mess. Obama is a team player. McCain asks people to stick with him while "he" leads. Obama's focus has always been on "us."

What's the difference in what Franklin Raines(who now works for Obama) and his pals did at Fannie Mae and what the Enron executives did? They both ran things into the ground to show "good" return for investors. It was all a house of cards!

I agree with most of what you said with the exception of that McCain has the solution.

The problem with McCain is that he doesn't know what he is talking about.

He use the shot gun approach by taking so many different stances on a topic that sooner or later he may get lucky and hit the right solution.

First he said the fundamentals are fine then he says we are in a crisis. What is he going to say tomorrow if the market goes up a 1000 points. "Uh...the fundamentals are strong and when I said we were in a Crisis...I meant that without the american workers we would be in a crisis."

Is that war in Iraq still going on?
Yes.
The surge is working, but we should have NEVER been at war in the first place.

McCain's fundamental problem is that he has terrible judgement. He saw the other side getting attention for a new popular face, and rather than try to debate on issues he got his own new face. Only his new face hasn't said anything worth voting for.

Honestly, it's getting harder and harder to keep up with all of the lies that come out of John McCain's mouth.

Here's McCain's Latest Lie:

"Two years ago, I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly serious problems," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS this morning. "The influence that Fannie and Freddie had in the inside the Beltway, old boy network, which led to this kind of corruption is unacceptable and I warned about it a couple of years ago."
.http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/despite-claims.html
.

And here is "straight- takin'" John McCain 10 months ago when asked about the subprime mortgage crisis:

"But so, in this whole new derivative stuff, and SIBs and all of this kind of new ways of packaging mortgages together and all that is something that frankly I don’t know a lot about. [...]"
"But I don’t know of hardly anybody, with the exception of a handful, that said ‘wait a minute, this thing is getting completely out of hand and is overheating."
"So, I’d like to tell you that I did anticipate it, but I have to give you straight talk, I did not."

I'm starting to lose track of all of these mavericky flip-flops from McCain and as usual our corporate media Republican water carriers won't report it because their job is to take every situation that arises in this Presidential race and ask:
"How is this good for McCain and how is this bad for Obama"?.

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.
In fact, it’s not clear who he is.

THIS MESS WAS STARTED BY DEMS IN THE CLINTON YEARS,
MADE WORSE BY BUSH'S NEGLIGENCE & FEDERAL DEFICITS,
GUESS WHAT: MCCAIN HAS THE RIGHT SOLUTIONS PROPOSED

Rob Reich on MSNBC 09/16:

"In the latter years of the Clinton administration -- when I was not there any longer, I should add -- there was an attempt by Alan Greenspan and Bob Rubin and a few others to deregulate financial markets, and they did. They split commercial banking off from investment banking. And many people say, "Well, that was the beginning of the problem," and then, of course, in 2003-2004, Alan Greenspan reduced short-term interest rates to the point where every single bank wanted to lend money. I mean, if you could stand up straight you could get a bank loan because there was so much pressure to get that money out the door. Money was so cheap. So, yes, there is some responsibility on Democrats, some responsibility on Alan Greenspan and the Fed."

The bloat of the financial sector started during the Clinton years with his sweeping deregulation of the commodity trading and banking-and-finance sectors that made things like the Enron energy trading abuses and the current investment bank expansion into conflicting business areas possible. Alan Greenspan's print-money-to-drive-growth inflationary monetary expansion policies also started during the Clinton Administration. THIS IS THE GREENSPAN-RUBIN REGIME OF ILLUSORY GROWTH. It brought us Enron, and the tech stock bubble which after it burst morphed into the real estate bubble.

In essence, Clinton abandoned Rob Reich's labor-and-strong-infrastructure approach to building a strong economy and he went with Bob Rubin's finance-and-money-policy-gimmicks to inflate the economy via a fat financial sector. These gimmicks created an illusion of growth during the Clinton Administration that became the tech stock bubble, which, after it burst at the start of the Bush Administration, morphed into the real estate bubble supported by mortgage-backed derivative products, risk-concealment, and fake valuation that the Clinton deregulation of investment banks made possible.

BUSH MAKES IT WORSE: NEGLIGENCE TO CORRUPT ABUSES, HUGE DEFICIT

Republicans aren't blameless: Bush inherited and continued these money-supply-and-banking-gimmick-growth policies, and, moreover, Bush contributed more inflationary and budgetary problems on top by driving the federal deficit to massive, historic levels and completely ignoring the corrupt and greedy excesses and abuses of the financial sector as the abuses took place. Republicans in Congress, who love deregulation, were negligent to the monsters the Democrats created.

FEEDING THE MONSTER: "LIQUIDITY BUBBLE" OF SPECULATIVE MONEY WAS OUR FOREIGN OIL $$$ COMING BACK TO US

The bloat has moreover been fed by the large amount of money we've been sending abroad to buy foreign oil -- massive amounts in the hundreds of billions a year, that has been coming back to us in the form of sovereign wealth funds and international hedge funds plowing LOTS of speculation money into these mortgage-backed securities, commodity future index funds and other investment schemes, driving up a real estate bubble & other asset inflation. The massive spending on foreign oil, mostly on credit, has created a huge "liquidity bubble" that fed the financial sector bloat. Well, even though we are still sending money abroad, the international interest in buying our credit-backed derivatives and other investment schemes has evaporated. With the loss of liquidity, asset values that were inflated, like stock and home prices, are falling back to earth.

The Democrats are still blocking domestic oil exploration & drilling, clean coal, natural gas & oil extraction technologies and nuclear power, using environmental and technical arguments that are decades out of date.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: FANNIE MAE & FREDDIE MAC
WERE CREATED DURING CLINTON YEARS BY DEMOCRATS

Fannie and Freddie's lax lending were creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton Administration, intended to make mortgages available to more people who couldn't qualify easily to buy their own homes.

Fannie and Freddie have also been feeding troughs for Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector. The Clinton administration's White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama's VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.

Obama is trying make Bush and the Republicans own this problem, tied to McCain somehow! Obama's part of the dysfunctional partisan culture, engaging in finger-pointing attacks, and hyping up partisan bashes in the middle of crises.

He’s a dope – he makes Bush look like a genius.: McCain got D’s at the Naval Academy, finishing 894 out of 899. Bush got a gentleman's C at Yale while. Bush also has an MBA from Harvard. There is no evidence that McCain has done any serious reading or thinking since he left the Naval Academy.

He’s a parasite – spent his entire adult life working for the government, whether as a naval office or politician. Bush at least had real experience in the private sector.

He’s a coward. The so-called war hero crashed five planes, set the USS Forrestal on fire and was so avid to talk to his North Vietnamese captors that they called him “songbird.” McCain should be awaiting court martial – not running for President. He also knuckled under to the right wing nuts of his own party in picking his VP.

He’s a serial adulterer who makes Bill Clinton look chaste. He married a friend’s wife, then dumped her for a rich young Cindy in order to support his political ambitions. Sarah is just a trophy VP.

He’s corrupt – he took bribes from Charles Keating.

He’s dishonest – McCain's campaign of lies and deceit makes Bush's 2000 campaigns, against both McCain and Gore, look like models of enlightenment and clarity. Indeed, McCain makes Nixon look like a saint.

He’s unprincipled. The so-called maverick and independent stands were a pose taken for convenience rather than out of conviction. McCain has abandoned all of the positions that set him apart from Bush in order to get his party's nomination, showing that he will say anything for political advantage, regardless of what he truly believes.

Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of
subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically
the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to
gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.
But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism,
that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped
create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a
retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered
institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had
no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound
business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either
that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton
put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended
Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so
doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he
and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."
Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary
market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall
Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social
engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion
financial train wreck.
And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the
quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the
real estate market in America.
As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at
Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it
for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in
early 2005 under an ethical cloud.
Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded
their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.
Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and
other senior executives could earn big bonuses.
In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and
other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make
changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk.
But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae
business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from
bankruptcy by Bank of America.
At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her
brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.
The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to
affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of both
Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers tens of
billions of dollars.
And the worst is far from over. By the time it is, we'll all be paying for
Clinton's social experiment, one that Obama hopes to trump with a whole
new round of meddling in the housing and jobs markets. In fact, the social
experiment Obama has planned could dwarf both the Great Society and New
Deal in size and scope.
There's a political root cause to this mess that we ignore at our peril.
If we blame the wrong culprits, we'll learn the wrong lessons. And
taxpayers will be on the hook for even larger bailouts down the road.
But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn't get it. They won't
acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-meaning, if
misguided, acts.
Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more
interference in the market will solve the problem their policies helped
cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional wisdom is
buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-government
solutions.
While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a
home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and
tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of
billions in subprime bilge.
Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government's
fingerprints all over it.

I can't believe the republicans, who have run the White House and BOTH houses of Congress for the last EIGHT years are trying to blame this on the Democrats. McCain voted against regulating these people we are bailing out now. ALL this was COMPLETELY on Bush's watch. End of story.

The economy tanks EVERY time the republicans are in power and bailouts become commonplace. And this is the same John McCain that wanted to privatize Social Security so people would use it on the stock market. Rightttttttt. No, the republicans aren't afraid of forcing the old to eat cat food for the rest of their lives in order to make a fast buck.

Really, losing momentum is he? Hmm. Today's polls, fresh from WI and OR (Rasmussen) show him gaining ground in these stronghold Dem states. He's within 2 pts in Wisc and 4 in Oregon. But that's okay, just keep telling yourselves what you want to hear. That way, it really will be a surprise when you wake up the morning after the election and see McCain's landslide win. Obamites = dreamers

------------------------

Problem with Rasmussen is that is biased. I see Sean Hannity and the Fox Network refer to it a lot so it is definitely skewed in their favor

As usual, the liberal politicians and media think that the public is stupid. The real story should be a Presidential candidate who, fresh from undermining our war effort for political gain, now seeks to recklessly flaunt how bad he thinks the economy is without any concern for generating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It wasn't too long ago when he enjoyed perks of being the celebrity. The press treated him better then the other politician because of his history (POW). I mean lets face it, he was in Congress for over 20 years and yet his record is pretty thin. His claim to fame is the McCain-FeinGold and supposedly fighting against earmarks. Other then that...nothing. Yes Obama record will be thin but then again he has only been in Congress for 4 years. But even though he has only been in Congress for 4 years his number of accomplishments are not that far behind McCain who has ad 20+ years.

And yet........the outcome of this election is going to rest on a small number of "low information" voters in a tiny handful of swing states. These voters will not give any thought to the election for many weeks yet so there is just no possible way to predict on what bases they will make their decision.

My friends, I know I pissed you off in 2000 when I called you agents of intolerance, but I need your help because Obama is going to kick my a$$ this November if you don't come out and rescue me. In return, I promise that if elected, I'll appoint all born again idiots to the economy commission.

OK, for any truthful and hardworking Journalist not in the pocket of Obama, here is something that is truly newsworthy.

Franklin Delano Raines (born January 14, 1949 in Seattle, Washington) is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton. He is currently employed by Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign as an economic adviser.

The son of a Seattle janitor [1], Raines graduated from Harvard University, Harvard Law School; and Magdalen College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Couple this Obama connection to what McCain said in 2005 ...

[Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]: Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.]

Then couple this to the fact that Obama is the number 2 recepient of lobbying money coming from Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Then, couple this to the fact that Obama was a key defender of the current failed policies of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.

Couple this with the fact that Obama has consistently and is on record as having supported looser lending practices in order to pander to his base, the poor, the minorites, etc.

Surely these key issues would be excellent news-worthy items to explore and expose.

You and your friends at the Post are falling down all over yourselves about this.

However, regarding the current economic issues with FNMA and AIG, as was once written in your very paper- "FOLLOW THE MONEY".

If we look closely, it is easy to see why the Democratically controlled congress isn't out calling for investigations into wrong doing at FNMA. The person who headed FNMA is one of Barrack Obama's financial advisors. In addition, the money that has been flowing from these entities to the Democratic Party is staggering, yet we see no reporting of that connection anywhere in your paper.

Howard Wolfson stated the other day that this election is clearly showing the bias that exist in the main stream media.

John McCain is an anachronism stuck in the 1950s. In both his public and private lives, McCain acts like the son of privilege he has always been. His world view is tainted by rose colored lenses from on high. He has never had to, and cannot now, relate to either the normal circumstances or the difficulties people live through each and every day. How, exactly, does an anachronism reinvent himself in the midst of multiple crises when he doesn't know the language or the movements of present day America. We will be damned as a nation if he is elected in November.

Really, losing momentum is he? Hmm. Today's polls, fresh from WI and OR (Rasmussen) show him gaining ground in these stronghold Dem states. He's within 2 pts in Wisc and 4 in Oregon. But that's okay, just keep telling yourselves what you want to hear. That way, it really will be a surprise when you wake up the morning after the election and see McCain's landslide win. Obamites = dreamers.

McCain eally means it when he talks about "fundementals of his economy being strong" Here's how:

1. For McCain, a rich person earns $5million
2. For McCain, there is no problem in "our" economy becoz, he doesn't even know how many houses he owns! If a guy owns 7 homes, surely, can he tell if the general economy has taken a downward turn?
3. McCain can afford cutting taxes for those earning $5 million, and what the heck, to the rest of the 95% of Americans.

This 95% of us is who Obama wants to cut taxes for. McCain doesn't get it! I just lost my one (1) home! I wish I could say that the fundementals of my economy is strong!

Posted by: Jennifer | September 17, 2008 5:22 PM
----------------------------------
Jennifer, I'm assuming you put this out there for us to complete--right? O.K. here's one:

I'll take...Democrats for John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008 are the dumbest fundamentals in the "whole wide" world including those who can see Russia from their front porch dumb" for $500 please, lol

Look, it is simple.
McCain will bear his rightful share of Republican blame for the financial mess, the war, and incompetent government.
But if the election is about character mainly, he will also dip because of the many distortions, flipflops and lies and his harping on being a POW when he can't think and speak the most basic thoughts about the economy. It's the economy, stupid, and he and Ms. Tuffet are f'd.

Greed is the root of this problem. Celebrity wantabes and those for the quick buck got over their heads trying to pursue the American dream of buying a home, big cars, etc.....greedy wall street oblige. Notice the "blue" states (with the exception of Florida) are the ones hit the hardest.
We common folk with our degrees from substandard colleges, or no degree at all, knew better.

What threw me off the McCain wagon is the continous lying! How can McCain circum to lies? Did PALIN make him do this? Did the GOP powr structure make him lie? Why lie about small things? Why make up stuff about yourself?

Sarah Palin did not have any credibility from the beginning, but why did McCain bend so low as to pick as VP? and when she started lying about herself, McCain followed suit! That's what sent me running as fast as I could from this lying duo!!!

By the numbers I will rip you idiot leftists a new one on such idiotic claims and implications.

1)Millions of home forclosures

Obama and team democrat pushed for loose lending policies in order to help their voting base.

2) Millions of devalued homes

Most homes are higher valued than when purchased. My home was purchased three years ago and it is up in value by 60%, just in three years.

Some homes go up, some go down. That is the nature of the market.

We had a housing boom followed by an inevitable bust. Later it will boom again.

3) Millions unemployed

As Jesus stated, "the poor will be with us always." This is obviously not a new thing. As to the rate of unemployment it is 6.1, half the amount it was under Carter. Rates in Illinois are 7.3, California, 7.3. Rates in Arizon and most other conservative states are 5.1 or less.

4) Millions with health insurance

Assuming you mean without. Sure, millions of people are in bad ways. Most of which are due to personal choices they made.

But why dont you ask Obama how he helped his brother and grandmother in Kenya, living in filthy shacks? Oh, wait, he failed to help them. But he does support a bill that would give somebody elses money to them.

5) Millions using food stamps

"The poor will be with us always."

6) Millions seeing income drop

Average income levels are up.

7) Terrible, unnecessary war

Millions in Iraq now free to live with substantially less killing that Hussein brought them. Because of Bush, actual violent deaths in Iraq, compared to Hussein, is down 10,000 percent.

And according to Kerry, Hillary and most dem senators the war was very necessary.

Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]: Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.

"To the spectacularly brilliant poster who accuses all people who oppose McCain of having no reason other than the man's date of birth: McC is mentally unfit to be POTUS. He is grossly out of touch with the concerns of average Americans."

Since 50% of the leftist posts about McCain mention his age then it is a logical assumption that age is a key harping point coming from you idito leftists. You adding additional claims yet not backing them up against McCain is just as stupid and just as pointless.

The proof is in the details and when the details are honestly reviewed, Obama ends up the loser in almost every case.

One prime example. Obama claims it is McCain that is out of touch regarding the economy yet it was Obama and team democrat that pushed for looser lending practices in order to help their base voters. Now that is what I call being out of touch.

There is a whole list of them:
* McCain supported the drilling moratorium; now he's against it.
* McCain strongly opposes a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.
* McCain thought Bush's warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
* McCain defended "privatizing" Social Security. Now he says he's against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)
* McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn't.
* McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.
* He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."
* McCain said he would "not impose a litmus test on any nominee." He used to promise the opposite.
* McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration's warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.
* McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain supported moving "towards normalization of relations" with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite.
* He argued the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party's policy making. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn't.
* He wanted political support from radical televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Now he doesn't.
* McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn't.
* McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a "'read my lips' candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?" referring to George H.W. Bush's 1988 pledge. "No new taxes," McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, "I'm not making a 'read my lips' statement, in that I will not raise taxes."
* McCain is both for and against a "rogue state rollback" as a focus of his foreign policy vision.
* McCain says he considered and did not consider joining John Kerry's Democratic ticket in 2004.
* In 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a $0.61-per-pack tax increase, won't commit to supporting a regulation bill he's co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris' former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser.
* McCain has changed his economic worldview on multiple occasions.
* McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions.
* McCain is both for and against attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor at his former church.
* McCain believes Americans are both better and worse off than they were before Bush took office.
* McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona.
* McCain believes his endorsement from radical televangelist John Hagee was both a good and bad idea.
* McCain's first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn't be "rewarded" for acting "irresponsibly." His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.
* McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal.
* In February 2008, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.
* McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty's behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.
* McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants' kids who graduate from high school. Now he's against it.
* On immigration policy in general, McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own legislation.
* In 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving "feedback" on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he opposes his own measure.

The list is SO ENORMOUS it is too big for one post.

"Hanoi McSame" ain't a maverick he is a dodering old ditherer unable make up his mind.

GOP REPUBLICAN WALL STREET is a manic machine for gambling.
Traders and money managers are given huge incentives to do whatever would increase short-term profits.

DUBIOUS MORTGAGES were PACKAGED into BONDS and SOLD and TRADED. Investment houses had huge incentives to increase LEVERAGE (OBSCENELY HIGH BORROWING).

While the GOP REPUBLICAN WALL STREET boom continued, government (White House, Congress, Supreme Court) looked the other way in return for compensation.

GOP REPUBLICAN Congress resisted tougher regulation and permitted WALL STREET to run out of control and obscenely high LEVERAGE (OBSCENELY HIGH BORROWED MONEY) RATIOS perpetrating intentional fraud against the American People.

GOP REPUBLICAN WALL STREET leaders intentionally deceived customers and lenders into taking hazardous risks for short-term rewards regardless of the long-term dangers to the American People.

Mortgages went bad. The powerful high leverage went into reverse. Losses eroded firms' capital bases and raised doubts about their survival.

Financial firms took major stupid and wasteful risks that severely damaged the American Economy and impeded economic recovery.

GOP REPUBLICAN STOCK MARKET $ TRILLION FRAUD has deepened consumers' pessimism, fear and reluctance to spend. There may be more failures of FINANCIAL FIRMS.

It's amazing that McCain keeps running out surrogates on various programs who have no idea on Economic issues. They always seem to try to run away from the Republican Economic Record, as though they are not Republicans. They can't hide from it, no matter how hard they try.

If you grow up in Hawaii you're 'exotic.'
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're the quintessential
'American story.'

If you name your kid Barack you're 'unpatriotic.'
Name your kids Trig and Track, you're 'colorful.'

If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the
individual you're 'reckless.'
A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a 'maverick.'

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your
organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to
$400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law
Review,create a voter regstration drive that registers 150,000 new
African Amerian voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law
professor,then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator
representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of
the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, then spend
nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of
nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the
Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs
committees, you are woefully inexperienced.
If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a
town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor
of a state with 650,000 people, you've got the most executive
experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of
the Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should
you be called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to
Russia.

If you are a Demoratic male candidate who is popular with millions of
people you are an 'arrogant celebrity'.
If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are 'energizing
the base'.

If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes
his own decisions you are 'presumptuous'.
If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you
refuse to explain, you are a 'shoot from the hip' maverick.

If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree you are 'an elitist
'out of touch' with the real America.
If you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate of
Annapolis, with multiple disciplinary infractions you are a hero.

If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an
'empty suit'.
If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an
'experienced executive'.

If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are 'extremist'.
If you believe in creationism and don't believe gobal warming is man
made, you are 'strongly principled'.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years with whom you
are raising two beautiful daughters you're 'risky'.

If you're a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her
water breaks to seek medical attention, you're an irresponsible
parent, endangering the life of your unborn child.
But if you're a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you're spunky.

If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls
you 'First dog.'
If you're a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the
right-wing press calls you 'beautiful' and 'courageous.'

If you kill an endangered species, you're an excellent hunter.
If you have an abortion you're not a christian, you're a murderer
(forget about if it happened while being date raped)

If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.
If you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the
proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

This is similar to the types of crap that leftists are making up about Palin.

Of course, I will target Obama. Again, note, these are totally made up, so play along. It took me all of 1 minute to come up with it.

"When Obama was confronted with the issue of his inappropriate touching of his young daughters by his close pastor friend Jeremiah Wright, he first denied it then later admitting it said that he was doing it for an experiment in how well they would respond to inappropriate touching, even if it was coming from their dad. This event, even though documented, has not been investigated by the press."

Yep, it is darned easy to just make up crap. And leftists are doing it left and right.

McCain is already behind in the polls that matter, the polling of states, and given Obama's strong ground organization, you could say with confidence that Obama would win if the election were today. That said, there's still a month and a half to go, and given the media's propensity to give irrelevant campaign drama stories front page status for 2 weeks at a time, anything could happen.

"Obama's race has nothing to do with his qualifications except that America has struggled to realize that pigmentation and family heritage have unfairly negatively impacted human relations for centuries. Certain lesser (white) creatures and fellow citizens have thought it perpetually sporting to raise themselves up socially by pressing others (blacks) down...."

"BTW, when will McSame ask the Vietnamese government to release his POW records. Did he really collaborate?"

Whoa, all the hate crazies are out today, talking like manic trash... I don't even want to be here! Send me your money, but stay far, far away from me!

Ha Ha! I wouldn't hang out with any of these supporters of mine on this board. What trash! Ha Ha!

My friend, my friend, please stop it with the hate...the fundamentals of our economy are strong; the fundamental American workers are strong, we are fundamentally, fundamental in our funds and our fundamental funds are strong; the American workers are having fun with our fundamentals and I fundamentally support the American workers to have fun while their funds are fundamentally depleting. What's so fundamentally wrong with that you fundamental idiots. My friends, let's be fundamentally patient as our funds fundamentally disappear from our fundamentally strong financial institutions. Are we having fun yet fundamentalist?

Hello I'm just a dumb liberal who thinks EVERYTHING from Hurricane Katrina to 9/11 to the current Wall Street crisis is BUSH's and the REPUBLICAN's FAULTS.

After all, Bill Clinton, who along with other key Democraps still in power, were in FAVOR of LOOSE regulations to enable lower income people and more minorities borrow money for home loans, while the REPUBLICANS were against it.

Funny how the lib-tard media leaves this point out. The fact is, the financial conditions leading up to this were in place before the Bush Administration took power, and the other stubborn fact is, DEMOCRAPS have been in power in Congress for 2 years now, and have done NOTHING to avert this crisis.

The IDIOTS will be the DEMOCRATS and other sympathizers who vote for Obama.

If anything, Bush improved regulations while in office, due to Enron, and Republicans historically have been AGAINST looser lending regulations which caused this current crisis.

The American public is so stupid and sheepish to think this is Bush's and the Republicans' faults.

Once again, as I always say, since I hate liberals, does that mean I can abort them too?

The Democrats have been in control of both Congressional houses for the last two years. Where were their words of wisdom prior to this week? Congress has much more legislative control than the Presidency. Why wasn't Obama hollering before this? Oh, that's right. He's been too busy running for President since he became a Senator to notice.

John McCain is all bluster, as if anyone realy trusts anything that he says. Its almost hypocritical for him to be screaming about how he is going to fix Wall Street, yet he has nothing to say in specific to show he actually has any clue what to do. If he thinks the American people will look for favorably on him if he says a certain thing, he makes sure he is out there saying it.

How can anyone believe McCain and the Republicans, they made this problem and they really didnt care.

To the spectacularly brilliant poster who accuses all people who oppose McCain of having no reason other than the man's date of birth:
McC is mentally unfit to be POTUS. He is grossly out of touch with the concerns of average Americans. This has nothing to do with his age, but everything to do with his mental limitations, which are critically acute.
First of all, he's just not that smart to begin with. It's no accident that he could only gain admission to USNA through the influence of his Daddy & Grandpa, who were both admirals. It's no coincidence that he graduated in the bottom 1% of his class. Democracy doesn't mean that because most people aren't geniuses it's OK to have a stupid POTUS.
You don't want your doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. to be a dummy. Nor do we need an intellectually challenged person like McC in that position.
Even worse, he is intellectually incurious. He doesn't even try to understand the subtle nuances of complex issues. No, he just makes decisions on issues based on his gut feelings & then ignores anyone who has a different opinion. Palin is an even more extreme example of such closed-minded mental laziness. Unfortunately, the last 8 years has shown us what it's like when we have a POTUS like that- you get the most incompetent administration in history, filled with unqualified cronies. The nation deserves better than that. McC can't deliver a change in that regard. President Obama will usher in a new era where competency rather than political philosophy or personal acquaintance is the priority in hiring.
McC has a pretty severe personality disorder. He has a long history of reckless, rash, impulsive behavior. It's no anomaly that he tried to assault a colleague on the Senate floor, or that he called his wife a C**t in public. No wonder that longtime GOP Sen. Thad Cochran of MS said that the thought of McC
as POTUS sends cold shivers down his spine. These personality traits would be disastrous in a leader whose finger is on the button controlling a huge nuclear arsenal. The nation deserves better than that. (President Obama will be a leader who listens to all sides, & carefully considers the consequences of his decisions.) The Palin decision is a perfect example- he barely even knew her, but listened to Rove tell him to choose her. She's a hell of a lot less qualified to be POTUS than most people I know are.
What is McC hiding in his medical history? It is always standard that any candidate's medical records are open to the public for everyone to inspect at their leisure, but McC took the unprecedented step of only allowing a small # of selected reporters a total of 3 hrs. to peruse 1500 pages, with no copying or independent physician review permitted. One thing that does not represent is openness or respect for the people of this country.
That is only a small sampling of the reasons why McC is more unfit to be POTUS
than any candidate nominated by either party in my lifetime.

Oh my god...we have a major league "GAME CHANGER" going on right now...

Wowser.

Barbara "Babs" Forrester de Rothcshild Cabernet has endorsed John McCain for President. She called it in from Monaco....or was that London?

A quick calculation of the electorate will clearly show that tomorrow, millions of Hillary supporters, particularly those who are blue collar and working two jobs to make ends meet, will rise in support of the billionaire.

From Wick Allison, former Editor of the National Review (Buckley's magazine, highly conservative:

In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher [...]

[T]oday it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

"Executive abilities? She doesn't have any," said former Wasilla City Council member Nick Carney, who selected and groomed Palin for her first political race in 1992 and served with her after her election to the City Council.

Four years later, the ambitious Palin won the Wasilla mayor's office -- after scorching the "tax and spend mentality" of her incumbent opponent. But Carney, Palin's estranged former mentor, and others in city hall were astounded when they found out about a lavish expenditure of Palin's own after her 1996 election. According to Carney, the newly elected mayor spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office, without the council's authorization.

Carney confronted Mayor Palin at a City Council hearing, and was shocked by her response.

"I braced her about it," he said. "I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, 'I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't.'"

"I'll never forget it -- it's one of the few times in my life I've been speechless," Carney added. "It would have been easier for her to finesse it. She had the votes on the council by then, she controlled it. But she just pushed forward. That's Sarah. She just has no respect for rules and regulations."

The person and party who started the damage to the American economy were the economic policies signed into law in 1999 by the Democrat Bill Clinton with his signing of the Financial Services Modernization Act.

Will the media ask Obama “what fundamentals of the economy are broken”? How is Obama going to fix an economy if he believes that the Fundamentals of the American economy are broken?

When the fundamentals of an economy are broken, then there is NO Economy. (economics 101) Obama has shown he knows absolutely nothing about a countries economy. These economic policies that Obama says are broken, are the economic policies signed into law in 1999 by the Democrat, Bill Clinton with his signing of the Financial Services Modernization Act. that removed tough regulations and restrictions governing the economy. Keep smiling….

^^^ What if Obama's Conscience Spoke at the Same Time He Did? ^^^
^^^ Annotated transcript of Obama's Nomination Acceptance Speech ^^^

>>"Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story -- of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to."

--Four years ago, I laid a big one on you out of my fictionalized life story that I made about my drunken, polygamist, already-married Kenyan father who knocked up my then-17-year-old mother and then abandoned us.

>>"It is that promise that has always set this country apart -- that through hard work and sacrifice, each of us can pursue our individual dreams but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams as well."

--And where people like me can get ahead on racial preference and affirmative action, so that we advance without ever actually doing anything resembling hard work and sacrifice like you people!

>>"It is why I stand here tonight. Because for 232 years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women -- students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors -- found the courage to keep it alive."

--And support my undeserved advancement and also pay for my racial preference scholarships and all the gravy train that has come my way over the years! The donations of millions of african american supporters -- students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors -- paid my campaign the $6 million that it cost to move my nominating night event from the Pepsi arena to Invesco field in the Temple of Obama!

>>"We meet at one of those defining moments -- a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more."

--And the Democratic party is nominating a president with no experience or qualifications that might make him a credible executive!! I couldn't get hired to run a factory!! Ha Ha!

>>"Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay and tuition that is beyond your reach"

--And yet you have sent $400 million to my presidential campaign! That I keep spending on helping the voters get to know me better! As if that's the problem! What suckers!

*************************
In David Mendell's 2007 biography, Obama, it was reported that Obama was a B student whose grades slipped so far below a B at High School that in his final year his grandmother feared he would not get into a university. The chapter ends with him being accepted into Occidental on a full scholarship.

The NYT has published a letter written by Obama in 1990, that discusses his own experiences with affirmative action.

If you idiots vote for Mr McCain, you will become laughingstock of planet for the next century. Everything you do you screw up, so it not surpise me if you have President McCain. Screwing up is the American Way.

Obama's race has nothing to do with his qualifications except that America has struggled to realize that pigmentation and family heritage have unfairly negatively impacted human relations for centuries. Certain lesser (white) creatures and fellow citizens have thought it perpetually sporting to raise themselves up socially by pressing others (blacks) down. As long as it was common practice to segregate and denigrate our pigmented fellow citizens, it was okay to discriminate and insult them. Such habits persist, which is why I mention the fact that a pigmented fellow, such as Sen. Obama, must deal with the habitual and unfair minimization of his capabilities in certain quarters. Frankly, I believe Mr. Obama is preferable to Mr. McCain. I make this judgment without reference to the pigmentation of either candidate.

With one addition here; Why is it that leftists think that a word, such as deregulation, is necessarily evil, without actually looking at the specifics? Are they inbred idiots. Are they just gullible clueless dopes lead around by their nose rings?

You can have bad laws deregulated and goods laws regulated. You can have good laws deregulated and bad laws regulated. The truth is found in the details. The details of this current key issue is found in the rest of my post.

Deregulation or adherence to loose lending policies? Which caused our current problem?

1) Cause has been well known for years to be loose lending policies. Even before the housing bust wise economists stated that loose lending policies would lead to business failure and house loan defaults.

2) The law allowed loose lending policies well before the Gramm 1999 law. These issues are not connected.

3) The Gramm law was in regards to US banks being able to diversify. Something the foreign banks have been allowed to do for decades.

4) Gramm himself, along with other republicans warned Clinton and democrats that we needed to tighten loose lending policies.

5) Clinton refused saying that tight lending policies would hurt the minorities and the poor. Hmmm, dem pandering at its finest.

6) Obama, Dodd, Franks, Bill, Hill are all on record as being in favor of sub-prime loans in order to pander to their base.

7) Deregulation is a standard red-herring that dems like to bring up. They have been successful in the past due to a stupid electorate.

8) If the Gramm bill was bad, then why not blame Clinton who signed it into law? He had the power to veto the bill and win. Reps did not have enough votes to overcome a veto.

9) Recapping: It was reps against loose lending policies and it was democrats in favor of loose lending policies.

Looking back at history, McCain appears to be Herbert Hoover incarnation! With the economy in a cliffhanger, McCain proclaimed yesterday that “the economic fundamentals are strong” and boosted his anti-regulation credentials before he backpedaled, of course. McCain is clearly out of touch with reality, if thinks “fundamentals are strong” in the middle of this economic meltdown. You have Alan Greenspan, probably the person most identifiable economist to the common American, admit that this is a ONE IN A CENTURY EVENT, and is the worst he's ever seen it. You have the collapse of the real estate market, where the majority of Americans have their wealth and retirement tied up in. You have large investment banks and giant securities failing one after the other, and John McCain thinks the economic fundamentals are strong”! WTF!

Herbert Hoover who was president during great depression (1929) which lasted over 10 years was the first to assert the soundness of the economy, even as it was evaporating around him. Unemployment soared to 25%, banks were failing left to right, millions had life savings wiped out overnight. (Does any of this sound familiar, folks?)…Despite McCain wishful assessment, we are absolutely in a very difficult period and more than any other time, we need someone that understands the gravity of the economy. Steady hand that can bring about a viable and equitable change. We can’t afford another Hoover and definitely not McCain/Palin at the WH, dumb and dumber, when we need our smartest people to guide this economic ship to safety.

If the media stands by and nods credulously at this about-face on banking regulation, I will give up what little hope I have left for them. It seems like John McCain could shoot a puppy in front of their very eyes and they would just brush it off and keep talking about their war hero straight-talker.

“I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”

-- Sen. John McCain, in 2005.

In fact, here's a New York Times story from September 2003, clearly showing that the first substantive Fannie and Freddie reform from inside government came from the Bush administration. Spurred by worries that Fannie and Freddie were cooking their books and taking too many risks, Treasury Secretary John Snow proposed placing the companies under Treasury oversight with strict controls over risk and capital reserves. The NYT labeled the proposal "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago" and noted:

Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the companies.

So five years ago, there was one of those rare moments in Washington when the branches and personalities of government—in this case, the Bush administration—are less interested in protecting or expanding their turf than in fixing a looming catastrophe. What was Frank's response to the proposal?

"These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

This is the most ridiculous statement. If you vote for McCain/Paline 08, you will have McCain 2012 and Palin 2012-2016. If you are really a Hillary supporter, your lady will be too old to run for presidency.

The arguments made in this article do not hold water and continue to ignore that the electorate's views and reasons for them have changed, widened, become much more complex.

The assumptions made about democratic and republican leaning voters, holding the present presdient's party responsibe for the economy on the democratic side- believing that party caused job losses, maybe theirs, and that every Republican is a Bush clone and his actions reflect theirs on the Republican side and that they see failure as a result is incredibly simplistic.

The statement of interpretation of his and his campaign people's statement iis quite different from mine. This is an example of news reporters making news instead of reporting facts, the news. Labelling his statements as missteps is subjective, with you being the only judge.

Jobs are the result of business's employing workers. Who is president has very little to do with whom and why employers of all sizes hire or fire workers. As can be seen by the financial news of the last several weeks, it is the corporations, the boards who condone or not condone the company's leaders, and the investors who allow all of the previous, that determine who and who doesn't work, in all areas of the economy.

The underlying structure of his campaign looks like it is doing just fine to me. I cannot understand what the the meaning of that phrase is, reading your article.

Beware Moral Hazard Ahead: It is not a coincidence, as Republicans would have us believe, that they happen to have been the dominant political party for the last eight years and now this meltdown is happening under their "watch". Investing in another four years in the subbrain Republicans market, is high risk venture that sends the message to Republicans that failure is okay. That creates a moral hazard, just like electing George W for a second term did. If you vote for McCain they have no reason to change.

"Just one correction. Voters did give the Democrats a third term after Clinton. Unfortunately the the Supreme Court decided that election."

Well, no. Federal law says that states can determine the timetable and rules for their voting laws. Gore team wanted to illegally extend deadlines in order to steal the election. USSC simply set them straight on their little legal confusions. And long after this crap was over, the votes were counted and recounted by news orgs and still had Bush winning.

Just one correction. Voters did give the Democrats a third term after Clinton. Unfortunately the the Supreme Court decided that election. This is coming from someone who made the mistake of voting for Bush in 2000. I didn't make the same mistake twice. Anyone who would make that same mistake 3 times is a fool.

Does Aspergirl have a day job? Or is she paid by some political action committee to do this?
Man, does she have time to come up with stuff...
Posted by: shocked dad | September 17, 2008 4:27 PM
____________________________________

She's "COPY & PASTE"! They all are! ROVE gives them the script and like the dummies they are,,,they repeat!!!

Senator Barack Obama can not close the deal. He is weak! Senator Obama pushed the Panic mantra on economics crises. Would you trust him with a nuclear crises? No Obama! Vote McCain/Palin08
Hillary Clinton 2012!

In recent weeks, John McCain and the Republican Party have blatantly and without any shame adopted the Democratic campaign theme of “change”. It should be evident to an objective observer that Bush 43 and now McCain and Pailin are mere puppets to the true Republican national party leaders who control their strings. Cheney is one of the few of that inner cabal that have been calling the shots since the Nixon administration. They are in fact a continuation of the Nixon and Ford presidencies with only a disruption during the Carter and Clinton years. Bush 41( Head of the RNC during Nixon, former head of the CIA,VP to Reagan, and president is probably the real leader of this political Cosa Nostra if not a equal partner of this power sharing musical chairs game. His right and left hands have been Dick Cheney(former Sec.of Defense of Bush 41, former White House Chief of staff for Ford) and the other is Donald Rumsfeld(former Sec. of Defense for Ford and Bush 43,former special envoy to the Middle East during Reagan). Another member of this group, more likely a captain if not a full blown boss himself is James Baker (former C.O.S of Reagan, former Under Sec. of Commerce for Ford, former C.O.S and Sec of State for Bush 41, former Sec. of Treasury for Reagan, former chief legal advisor to Bush 43). Another captain or free lance enforcer is Karl Rove a college drop out and campaign manager for both Bush 41 and 43, also for Phil Gram who is McCain’s economic advisor.
Lets look at McCain’s staff of change.
On July 2, 2008, Steve Schmidt was given "full operational control" of McCain's campaign. Steve Schmidt prior to this was a top aide to Dick Cheney and a protégé to Karl Rove. Another advisor is Charles R. Black worked for Ronald Reagan's two Presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980 and he was a senior political adviser to the 1992 re-election campaign of George H.W. Bush. Another advisor is Randy Scheunemann. He was project director for the Project for the New American Century. A neo-conservative think tank founded by non other than Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bill Kristol and others in 1996. Other signatories to this group reads like a who’s who of the last 8 years of the republican administration.
These people have never cared about small town america or “values” All they care about is war profiteering. Many of the signatories have never served in the military. Cheney and Rove both dodged the draft. Look at the statement of principles by the PNAC. Rumsfeld was a good friend of Saddam Huessin in the 80’s Cheney didn’t want Nelson Mandela free. These are the real puppet masters, they throw out the talking points about the left of being elitist and not caring about middle america and these same guys other than Rove have advanced degrees and are worth no less than 10 million dollars. People who support them need to extricate their heads out of Limbaugh and Hannity’s asses and see what is really happening to them. McCain is not his own man he confuses stories of his real life with a book he read “The Gulag Archipelago", in which a fellow prisoner - not a guard - silently drew a cross in the dirt with a stick.” An ironic twist to all this is Eliot A. Cohen, a signatory to the PNAC "Statement of Principles", responded in The Washington Post: "There is no evidence that generals as a class make wiser national security policymakers than civilians. George C. Marshall, our greatest soldier statesman after George Washington, opposed shipping arms to Britain in 1940. His boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with nary a day in uniform, thought otherwise. Whose judgment looks better?"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/2581086/John-McCain-accused-of-plagiarising-Wikipedia-for-speeches.html. Even if you don’t like Obama there is no-way a sane person can want this continued blatant fleecing of our Nation.
Thes are all verifiable facts and can be found just with a google searches.
Other than the ultra affluent, how can anyone support the Republican Party? When will small town America realize that they are being duped into supporting the ultra-affluent agenda? The talking points of the right are so hypocritical that it becomes laughable. The red meat of the right is the so called Main stream Media as if Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. are not part of it. They demean celebrity status, however they tout one of their greatest presidents(Reagan) was an actor. They say they are the party of patriotism, yet many of the upper echelon of the party have never served, i.e. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Baker, Reagan. They say that they care about "Main Street" USA but only bail out the Whales of Wall Street. Yet small town America eat this tripe every year. They don't care about religion unless it can be used to stir up the base, nor science or technology unless there is a buck to be made. Small town America takes pride on its freedom but yet don't realize that over time we are becoming less free, ie wire tapping and other forms of domestic surveillance. They demean people of intelligence because they know many people of small town America don't have degrees and use it at a fake issue and call people who spent time in academia as elitist when many on the right serve on university boards and have part-time professorships. They say they are against affirmitive action but yet celebrate mediocrity, Bush43 and McCain graduating at the bottom of their classes. Who both came from already well established families and had all the opportunities and connections to excel. Why does small town America believes this is the party for them? Christian conservatives seem to the be the first ones who want to go to war and bomb someone before any diplomacy is tried. Why can't small town America and Christian conservatives realize they are being used as pawns just as much the Islamic fundamentalist are. Islamic fundamentalist come from small town Middle East and given the same kind of talking points as the evangelicals. They want prayer in school, no choice available to women, and believe to the core that their ideas about worship and country are the best. Wake up small town America you are being duped.
Talking about who is more patriotic, symbols, lipstick and wearing pins are nothing more than distractions to the real issue of how a few select group of people have held power almost continuously for over 30 years. Yes the left has their own political power groups but none have been so effective at pushing forward an agenda that is fundamentally bad for the U.S. and in a larger view the entire world. I stress again the now defunct PNAC and the AIPAC have been slowly pushing us closer to another World War. Bush41 and et al have been doing this and no one calls them on it. Every Republican administration has basically the same people recycled since Nixon. Just do a little research and you will see that these people are just pushing this agenda of some kind of Pax Americana and not taking into account that maybe other nations of the world might not like that and if not bomb them.
Many people who support the Republican party, really need to read "1984" by George Orwell and see how we as nation have been inching closer to that type of society. People think this story is about a communist society, but it is more about how a society is kept in a constant state of fear in order for the ruling class to stay in control. Doublespeak, patriotism to the point of frenzy, censorship, erosion of civil liberties (not respecting the Constitution) is happening right in front of us. The consolidation of government (the executive branch has never been more powerful than ever, gridlocked legislature with only two parties for representation, a judiciary that just kowtows to the executive branch). No real independent journalism. Cameras placed on every street corner. This may sound like delusional conspiracy stuff, but I implore people to research for themselves to really see what is happening to them. People think this could never happen here in the U.S. but it is already happening, slowly, incrementally all under the guise of "keeping America safe"

Dont you just love the leftist Obama lapdogs in the media and the clever way they word things?

Take one example. They want you to believe that a 6.1 percent unemployment rate is bad. Hell, that is still considered way BELOW average. I wonder why they want you to think it is bad. Oh yeah, to play along with the retarded gloom and doom that Obama is barking out.

Read this old article on unemployment rates.

August 5, 1983

Unemployment rates improve
After hitting a sky-high 10 percent in July 1983, the nation's unemployment rate cooled down a bit in August. Figures released on August 5 showed that half a million Americans returned to work, dropping the unemployment rate to a still hefty 9.5 percent.

The unemployment rate right now (today) in Illinois (Obama's state) is 7.3

Arizona (McCain's state) is 5.1

The end of the 1970s and the early 1980s had unemployment rates between 10 and 14.

But, in order to feed the negative frenzy that leftists love to spew around election time, the dimwitted leftists and WaPo would have you think that 6.1 is a bad unemployment rate.

California unemployment rate today? 7.3
Illinois rate? 7.3

Many Conservative states are less than 5.1 today.

Iowa? 4.3
Kansas? 4.6
Idaho? 4.1
Utah? 3.5

In fact, if you average out the conservative states compared to leftist states, conservative states have LOW unemployment and leftist states have HIGH unemployment.

And all states are lower that the lowest unemployment rates relative to the good old Jimmy Carter days.

WaPo is just licking up the mess that Obama cant seem to handle for himself.

You see to be in the same group as Mr. McCain. You do not understand EC 101. You do not measure how many people work to gauge the health of the economy. You measure how many people do not have lost their jobs. There will always be people working in this country, actually lots of them. The problem is at what rate will they lose their jobs? That is what defines the economy.

You are a very communicator. However, I disagree with your assertions regarding yourprevious comments:

"AleObama is the king of panderers, abetted by the MSM, and a dilettante in everything he does. He did nothing substantial or concrete for his constituents in Chicago. He is distorting the truth for his own gains.

I don’t trust Obama – he is so invested in himself and his own successes, to the detriment of every one else. And I resent all those overzealous Obots claiming that everyone who doesn’t support “The One” is a racist. When Obama loses in the GE, it’s because of his character and thin resume, not because he is 50% black. So grow up.
e21,"

Someone asked what the economic fundamentals are? Fundamentals are measurements like the unemployment rate, gross domestic product, consumer price index (cost of living), inflation rate, productivity rate, etc. That McCain describes fundamentals as merely hard working Americans demonstrates his complete lack of economic understanding. That is suddenly for regulation after opposing it and undermining it for all his time in public office demonstrates cynicism and expediency.

We do NOT need a committee to study the problem. We know what the problem is. This problem was caused by the DEREGULATION of the banking industry, the financial institutions and big business. So, YOU are part of the problem, NOT part of the solution.
America, there are lots of other groups that have been deregulated and are siliently out of control. So watch and listen, there has been some chatter but mostly behind closed doors. Those doors will be opening soon so be prepared.
This is not over by a long shot.

Alee21 says: "McCain wants Americans to regain confidence in themselves and their country while acknowledging there are many problems that have to be fixed. Why is that so unpalatable to the MSM and to the Obots?"

On Monday McCains said the fundamentals are sound. Today his VP said to Sean Hannity that our economy is in a shambles.

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

McCain is right that the US has the fundamentals of a strong economy - it has talent in the form of technologically trained people and it has natural resources galore. The US has the infrastructure. The US is still the destination for many people in the world. The economy right now is heading down the wrong track but these things don't happen overnight and the seeds were sown years ago. Both Dems and Repubs are responsible for the current situation and it is hypocritical for the liberal media to point the finger just at the Repubs.
The Congress has had a Democratic majority for 2+ years yet they have done little.

McCain wants Americans to regain confidence in themselves and their country while acknowledging there are many problems that have to be fixed. Why is that so unpalatable to the MSM and to the Obots?

Obama is the king of panderers, abetted by the MSM, and a dilettante in everything he does. He did nothing substantial or concrete for his constituents in Chicago. He is distorting the truth for his own gains.

I don’t trust Obama – he is so invested in himself and his own successes, to the detriment of every one else. And I resent all those overzealous Obots claiming that everyone who doesn’t support “The One” is a racist. When Obama loses in the GE, it’s because of his character and thin resume, not because he is 50% black. So grow up.

The bleep has hit the fan and it's time for the GOP to leave office. Senator John 'deregulation" McBush helped get us into this mess. He hasn't a clue how to get us out. And unlike "W", who's he gonna ask for advice: Phil Graham, his VP Sarah (I can see Russia from my house)Palin??? They haven't got a clue!

There is one GREAT flaw in your argument. It was not VOTERS who would not give the Democrats a third term after the Clinton presidency. Al Gore actually WON the popular vote -- remember? It was a jury-rigged U.S. Supreme Court that gave Bush a tainted victory in Florida. So much for your "no three terms" fundamental argument. Your fundamentals are as flawed as Obama's. He will manage to out-Kerry John Kerry as a flameout. Now THAT'S the change we need.

McLame said, “Man, Obama had 200,000 fundamentals watch him speak in Germany. But really, F Europe and F the world, cuz we’ve got all the fundamentals we need in the Repug party. My running mate, S. Pain, is really good at bringing fundamentals out to support me. She is more popular than me!”

allencharles, good job in printing more than just one line like most dems do. But horrible job on actually using real facts and drawing truthful and logical conclusions. Man, you were really out there in left field.

McCain not only politically stumbled in his "Strong Fundamentals" comment (Although the comment was certainly accurate and even pre-echoed by the venerable Alan Greenspan from Stephanopolos's Sunday Show)- His later spin (The Fundamentals are the American worker) was transparent, even patronizing.

Having said that Obama's new line of attack, emphasizing the weakness of the economy and fall of Wallstreet could backfire on the experience issue...

1. Obama says He doesn't need a committee to deal with this crisis...He's a lawyer/community activist not a world class economist

2. The lastest polls apparently show an clear advantage on the part of McCain over Obama regarding trust and as a man of action vs a man of words-Obama's previous lead on the economy has also shrunk to small single digits.

In the end if the American people accept Obama's assertion of the seriousness of this financial crisis, they may not accept Obama as more trustworthy than McCain to guide them through it.

Interesting that most supporters of Obama can quote facts and supporters of McCain can only talk in generalities in support of McCain and his "policies". I was on the fence, leaning toward McCain, until he and Sarah started lying. I think it is quite possible that Rove wrote their speeches. Even when they are in different states, their words are almost identical. How can that be?

Yep, those crafty dems sure do know how to spin a tale to glorify themselves just for the sake of winning an election.
The fact that they stoop to pig sty level is nothing knew.
Posted by: KMichaels | September 17, 2008 4:13 PM
_________________________________

More lies and halftruths from the coward leftist idiots on this board:

"She supported the Bridge to Nowhere, until she rejected it, but still took the money for it in the end."

Actually, she supported the general transportation infra-structure changes in Alaska that have been long overdue. The better road systems have been in place in other states for decades so of course, those states dont need as much money for the road system.

She initially was ok with the Bridge plan because she mistakenly thought of it as just one of the many parts of the over overhaul of the Alaskan transportation/road system. All of this was done before she was actually elected.

After being elected she accepted government money and spent it on building up the Alaskan roads and travelways. It is common practice for the federal government to give monies to states to build up their road systems.

"She abuses executive power"

This has been debunked a number of times. She did no such thing.

"and says the War in Iraq is "God's" war."

Actually, she said no such thing. What she said was akin to Abraham Lincolns belief. She said, paraphrasing "let us pray that what we are doing in Iraq is on God's side. Let us pray that what we are doing is part of God's plan"

Obviously she was concerned about doing the right things and that God would approve. She did not conclude that everything America does is correct. She simply prayed that we would take steps to make sure that what were doing was correct and was Godly.

Leftists have a seriously difficult time with handling and or spreading truth.

All the real leaders were out on September 15 making reassuring noises, which were true, by the way. Except Obama. Obama instead ran his mouth by sniping at McCain and exaggerating the systemic fears. Only Obama was out with ads shrilling fearful gloom-and-doom statements (that were exaggerations) hoping to capitalize on the Lehman bankruptcy to beat the bushes to drive up an economic-fear vote.

McCain was saying necessary calming things that leaders say, when he said that the economy's fundamentals were strong, and the things he was saying were in fact true. In the middle of a banking crisis, real leaders don't run around saying "THE SKY IS FALLING! OUR ECONOMY IS BROKEN!" In the afternoon of Monday, September 15, Bloomberg came out and agreed with McCain's statement that the fundamentals of our economy are strong, and so have other economic & business leaders.

On the day that Obama released an ad ridiculing John McCain's reassuring & accurate statement that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, and declaring that John McCain is wrong, that the economy is "broken", Obama was flying off to BEVERLY HILLS to entertain with multimillionaires at a fundraiser with Barbera Streisand. Although Obama has raised breathtaking & historic campaign funds ($400 million so far?), he's also engaged in lavish, unprecedented spending. He spent $6 million alone to move his nomination acceptance speech to Mile-High stadium on that special-built temple-like stage. He's raised historic money, but he's also spent it in an historic way. He needs every penny of the $10 million he was expected to make off his Hollywood backers in Beverly Hills.

This is how a self-centered and narcissistic me-first politician wastes his donors' historic giving and then when he blows through that, goes out asking for more.

Wonder what he'd do if given the keys to the U.S Treasury and put in charge of the Internal Revenue Service and our economy.

What will cause and why the empire called America is in danger of demise if we do not wake up and make necessary changes to avoid it?

There we go again, putting FEAR into the contest in an attempt to over shadow every other issue. Yet a need for FEAR is considerably needed before it becomes too late to survive what may be a change in our lifestyle and general living conditions as American citizens. Is it a terrorist attack that will make such a drastic change? The cause of our demise is much slower to occur than a sudden bomb exploding yet more damaging and will affect every single man women and child in our society. The life altering effects will reach into the very core of our nation’s vitality.

McCain is a genuine hero and his first love is the need for defense, but he needs to assure the nation that the Bush\Cheney\McCain riff now happening with Russia will not escalate to a new COLD WAR. He fails to address the danger of the national debt and the danger of a new weapon buildup will cause our economy. The WAR mentality I saw all during this convention speaks very loud as to what he intends to do as President. The financing of more debt has to come from somewhere and cutting more corporate taxes will only weaken our defense capabilities. President Reagan is McCain’s hero and his guide on defense, but McCain forgets that the five trillion spent by Reagan for the first COLD WAR is yet to be paid for. McCain supported the “SPEND and BORROW ,” policies of Reagan Republicans that we cannot continue to afford. We as a nation are being swallowed up by all the debt, both national and personal.

Take Georgia as an example, Bush is planning to pay them ( with borrowed money) a billion to replace the weapons they lost in this conflict with Russia. The absolute refusal to believe we are borrowing ourselves into an eventual economic crash amazes me. We have purchased overpriced homes that we cannot keep up the payments on. Investment banks have obligations exceeding sixty-five dollars to every dollar on hand. No wonder the economy is weakening we are a debtor nation both individually and as a nation. We just made the biggest government bailout in our history with more money to be borrowed.

The arrogant idea that somehow we can afford to provide a world wide police force (our military) at no cost to others and still afford the necessary infrastructure in our own country to compete with the emerging economies of China, India and even Russia. We mistakenly believe we need more weapons than the rest of the world combined and yet cannot afford to replace roads, bridges any other investments needed at home.

Unfortunate for America McCain seems to desire to start a new “COLD WAR” with Russia. If you recall the cost of all the weapons during the last”COLD WAR” was the cause of the fall of the USSR, but now things have changed. Russia is running nearly annual five hundred billion surplus while we are running about the same in deficient. Whom do you think will be interested in financing a new military buildup on top of the ten trillion we already owe? When the answer becomes no one, the American Empire is over. Interest rates will become unaffordable and hyperinflation will cause a near economic crash. Life as we know it will end.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, will endorse John McCain for president on Wednesday, her spokesman tells CNN.

The announcement will take place at a news conference on Capitol Hill, just blocks away from the DNC headquarters. Forester will “campaign and help him through the election,” the spokesman said of her plans to help the Republican presidential nominee.

Here is the question liberals should be asking themselves -

Why is a major player in the DNC endorsing John McCain for president? Could it be that she understands that "President McCain and Vice President Sarah Palin" are the best choice for our country?

Posted by: Anonymous
-----------------

Nope. The questions I'm asking are, "Why does the last name 'de Rothschild' sound so elitist? Does this mean she's out of touch, both in her financial situation, and of thinking McCain will win? Who is this woman? Why should I care what she thinks?"

OK? Explain to me what are the fundamentals of the economy? If our economy is so fragile, why are millions of us working? How can Obama raise 9 million dollars in one night, if the fundamentals aren't strong? The dems want us to believe we are on day from mass soup lines. That is not the real world.

Palin has run a state government, planned a state budget, set spending priorities, overseen the state's economy.

And Obama?

Posted by: WylieD | September 17, 2008 3:53 PM

__________________________________________

Ummm. Hmmm. First, she is not the GOP Presidential candidate, so she is moot unless McCain dies. Which is what I am thinking her supporters secretly wish. He had better hire a food tester if he win's the election.

She supported the Bridge to Nowhere, until she rejected it, but still took the money for it in the end.

She abuses executive power and says the War in Iraq is "God's" war.

No thank you very much. If you like that, go to your tent revival and hug your bible and speak all the tongues that you want, all by your self, but most American's don't find that appropriate anywhere near the Executive Office of the President.

While in the Congress for 26 years Senator McCain always advocates fewer regulations. Even as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce he wanted less regulations except a few for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

And …. nothing happened.

Senator Obama came to the Senate about four years ago and the Democratic Party is in charge of the Congress now. And nearly the whole financial system collapsed.

Wow. My head is spinnng so fast that I feel queezy. On Monday the economy was sound. Today Palin said it is in "shambles".

In two days our economy went from sound to shambles?

But it turns out that "fundamentals of our economy" means our labor force. I missed that lecture I guess. Our labor force is sound.

John McCain feels our labor force is sound. 11,000,000 illegal imigrants. Jobs outsourced. Companies failing. High end jobs going to Indians because American kids are too lazy to get engineering degrees.

So, after 18 months of election primaries and caucuses, we end up with John McCain, the elderly "maverick" who has cozied up to everything President Cheney and his aide-de-camp George W. Bush stand for, and Barack Obama, a clean, articulate, educated Negro with zero executive experience. No offense intended. Meanwhile, the country is at war in two foreign countries, the terrorism threat remains, the deregulation experiment is a colossal failure, and it may well be that the economy is beyond fixing. Obviously, the system under which the nation picks it leaders is totally corrupt and ineffective in electing anybody who is ready and able to cure what ails us.

All of this of course is besides the point. The reason why conservatives dont like Obama is because he historically goes against conservative principals. He supports abortion, paramount to the murder of unborn children. He supports forced government redistribution of wealth, paramount to communism. He fights against free trade and the general concept of fairness in business. He promoted sub-prime loans with loose lending practices because it was part of his pandering approach to politics, hoping to trick the poor and the minorities into handing over their votes to him. As it turned out, as is often the case with socialist pandering, the poor and minorities are worse off because of sub-prime loose lending policies.

That is just a few logical reasons why Obama is a bad choice.

########################################

Same old conservative propaganda and crapola. Abortion, capital punishment, war - God says do not kill, period. Bush redistributed wealth to the wealthy with his tax cuts and bailouts of failing companies - he is the ultimate socialist. Bush had seven years to fix the subprime problem - blame him, not Obama for this debacle. As for being worse off, everyone in this country is worse off after seven years except the wealthy.

"I am white and will vote for Obama. Why would I vote McBush becasue he was a POW 30 years ago? This country needs someone who can do something with the economy and that is not McCain by his OWN admission."

First off, why is being white an issue? Are you yet another leftist racist?

Next, nobody is saying that there is any singular reason to vote for McCain. Yes, he did serve our country faithfully in the US military (evil talk if you are a leftist) but he also continued to serve our country in elected office for decades later.

Yes, as McCain is an honest man, he admitted that economy was not his strongest subject.

However, it was McCain that was against sub-prime loose lending practices and it was Obama that was FOR sub-prime loose lending practices.

All in all, if Obama is supposed to be good at economics, why in hell would he be so utterly stupid to be in favor of sub-prime loose lending policy? Well, the truth is obvious. He was simply pandering to his base, the poor, the minorities. Obama in all his glorious retardation pushed to get more people into risky loans. The predicted outcome being banking failure on the parts of banks that adopted loose policies and home mortgage defaults on the part of the those Americans that accepted risky loan terms.\

Bush (evil name if you are a leftist) was apparently smarter than Obama and the dems on this issue. Bush correctly stated that if Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac did not tighten up their lending policies then they would go bankrupt.

Who came to the rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, defending their loose lending policies? It was the two politicians that recieved hundreds of thousands of lobbying money from Fannie and Freddy. Yep, it was Obama and Chris Dodd (DEMOCRATS).

I really hope the vitriolic and sometimes racist tirades against Barack Obama I see popping up on message boards like these are predominantly the same handful of clueless trolls. If a large section of Americans actually think like these troglodytes then we don't even deserve someone like him as our leader. It saddens me to see such ignorance in my countrymen. I guess fast food and reality TV has finally turned us into a nation populated by a slight majority of mindless drones.

Have you not been paying attention? Our country is self-destructing before our eyes and you want to elect the same party that let it all happen? Unbelievable.

I am sure Sarah is no help, she has other things on her mind like this........

DO NOT MISS THIS........................!!!!!

CEO - Troopergte - Bristol - Levi!

Check this out, is she nuts or what!
All you Palin McCain supporters - you better read this. Seems Sarah had a little help in her run for governor of Alaska...Here is the link to the story and a bit of it..!

Palin linked electoral success to prayer of Kenyan witchhunter The pastor whose prayer Sarah Palin says helped her to become governor of Alaska founded his ministry with a witch hunt against a Kenyan woman who he accused of causing car accidents through demonic spells. At a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God on June 8 this year, Mrs Palin described how Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her when he visited the church as a guest preacher in late 2005, prior to her successful gubernatorial bid. In video footage of the speech, she is seen saying: I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me.

sarah palin has been a horrible choice. it's energized the wingnuts, but they were going to vote for mcliar anyway. and mcgeezer's "pivot" on regulation is nothing short of the biggest flip flop i've ever seen. the self-styled "deregulator" is, along w/ phil "nation of whiners" gramm, the reason we're in this "mess." maybe sarah palin can get that nutty preacher who hunts witches in africa and who "laid hands on her" so that she could win the governorship in alaska, is available for mcgeezer?

Palin has run a state government, planned a state budget, set spending priorities, overseen the state's economy.

And Obama?

Posted by: WylieD | September 17, 2008 3:53 PM

******************

She saddled a town of $7,000 in about 20 million worth of debt. How was the budget that big to begin with? Grover would drown her in the bathtub before she could lay her hand on her twisted version of the snake handler's bible.

THIS MESS WAS STARTED BY DEMS IN THE CLINTON YEARS,
MADE WORSE BY BUSH'S NEGLIGENCE & FEDERAL DEFICITS,
GUESS WHAT: MCCAIN HAS THE RIGHT SOLUTIONS PROPOSED

Rob Reich on MSNBC 09/16:

"In the latter years of the Clinton administration -- when I was not there any longer, I should add -- there was an attempt by Alan Greenspan and Bob Rubin and a few others to deregulate financial markets, and they did. They split commercial banking off from investment banking. And many people say, "Well, that was the beginning of the problem," and then, of course, in 2003-2004, Alan Greenspan reduced short-term interest rates to the point where every single bank wanted to lend money. I mean, if you could stand up straight you could get a bank loan because there was so much pressure to get that money out the door. Money was so cheap. So, yes, there is some responsibility on Democrats, some responsibility on Alan Greenspan and the Fed."

The bloat of the financial sector started during the Clinton years with his sweeping deregulation of the commodity trading and banking-and-finance sectors that made things like the Enron energy trading abuses and the current investment bank expansion into conflicting business areas possible. Alan Greenspan's print-money-to-drive-growth inflationary monetary expansion policies also started during the Clinton Administration. THIS IS THE GREENSPAN-RUBIN REGIME OF ILLUSORY GROWTH. It brought us Enron, and the tech stock bubble which after it burst morphed into the real estate bubble.

In essence, Clinton abandoned Rob Reich's labor-and-strong-infrastructure approach to building a strong economy and he went with Bob Rubin's finance-and-money-policy-gimmicks to inflate the economy via a fat financial sector. These gimmicks created an illusion of growth during the Clinton Administration that became the tech stock bubble, which, after it burst at the start of the Bush Administration, morphed into the real estate bubble supported by mortgage-backed derivative products, risk-concealment, and fake valuation that the Clinton deregulation of investment banks made possible.

The financial sector grew unduly fat, to a size and proportion of our economy that is disproportionate to how large it should be for the economy that supports it. The failures are needed to shrink the finance sector down to a reasonable size again.

BUSH MAKES IT WORSE: NEGLIGENCE TO CORRUPT ABUSES, HUGE DEFICIT

Republicans aren't blameless: Bush inherited and continued these money-supply-and-banking-gimmick-growth policies, and, moreover, Bush contributed more inflationary and budgetary problems on top by driving the federal deficit to massive, historic levels and completely ignoring the corrupt and greedy excesses and abuses of the financial sector as the abuses took place. Republicans in Congress, who love deregulation, were completely negligent to the monsterS the Democrats created.

FEEDING THE MONSTER: "LIQUIDITY BUBBLE" OF SPECULATIVE MONEY WAS OUR FOREIGN OIL $$$ COMING BACK TO US

The bloat has moreover been fed by the large amount of money we've been sending abroad to buy foreign oil -- massive amounts in the hundreds of billions a year, that has been coming back to us in the form of sovereign wealth funds and international hedge funds plowing LOTS of speculation money into these mortgage-backed securities, commodity future index funds and other investment schemes, driving up a real estate bubble & other asset inflation. The massive spending on foreign oil, mostly on credit, has created a huge "liquidity bubble" that fed the financial sector bloat. Well, even though we are still sending money abroad, the international interest in buying our credit-backed derivatives and other investment schemes has evaporated. With the loss of liquidity, asset values that were inflated, like stock and home prices, are falling back to earth, as they have to eventually.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: FANNIE MAE & FREDDIE MAC
WERE CREATED DURING CLINTON YEARS BY DEMOCRATS

Fannie and Freddie were creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton Administration, intended to make mortgages available to more people who couldn't qualify easily to buy their own homes.

Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration's White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama's VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.

BUSH MADE THINGS WORSE: IGNORED ABUSES, FAILED TO POLICE, AND PILED ON HIS HUGE FEDERAL DEFICITS

TODAY OBAMA'S POINTING THE FINGER OF BLAME AT ... MCCAIN!

Obama is spending a lot of money on attempts to make this all out to be a Bush-caused Republican problem, instead, tied to McCain somehow! He's part of the dysfunctional partisan hack culture, engaging in finger-pointing attacks, and bashing in the middle of crises.

MCCAIN HAS THE RIGHT SOLUTION SET

McCain's focus on fixing each of these problems by reforming Washington's relationship with Wall Street, restructuring a new regulatory regime for investment banks and commodity trading, for getting government spending under control thereby ending massive federal deficits, and for energy independence now.

McCain's set of solutions is exactly what we need. They are remarkably similar to the comprehensive set of solutions that a Nobel Prize-winning economist (who supports Obama, by the way) proposes:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, will endorse John McCain for president on Wednesday, her spokesman tells CNN.

The announcement will take place at a news conference on Capitol Hill, just blocks away from the DNC headquarters. Forester will “campaign and help him through the election,” the spokesman said of her plans to help the Republican presidential nominee.

Here is the question liberals should be asking themselves -

Why is a major player in the DNC endorsing John McCain for president? Could it be that she understands that "President McCain and Vice President Sarah Palin" are the best choice for our country?

I am sad to say that my 2000 McCain Maverick died with the 2004 EMBRACE and was reborn a Bush Toady. The last eight years have revealed three major flaws that disqualify McCain for the Presidency:
1) He wants it too badly. He knows that this is his last shot. He will say and do anything to get this job. Good-bye, 'Straight Talk'. Hello, 'Rove Speak'. My former hero even cheapens his greatest triumph. Keating. POW. Enron. POW. Subprime. POW. Backing Bush 90%. POW. Letting George define torture. POW. His badge of courage has become a shop worn fig leaf.
2) He is too tactical. Palin was a brilliant battlefield stroke. Step on Obama buzz. Energize the base. Appeal to women. But, speaking of mortality, is she the best strategic choice? Will she step up in case of... Will she help unite a divided country, McCain’s stated objective? McCain is Patton leading a charge. Slapping down veterans benefits that might keep boys from the front lines. Victory! Strategically, our dollar and reputation go down the toilet while Iraq amasses an $80 billion surplus and cuts oil deals with China. Victory? We need an Ike, not a Patton!
3) He is too military. Ike warned of the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex. Recent RAND Corporation and GAO studies conclude that scores of weapons systems are behind schedule, over budget and failing to deliver promised capabilities. Contractors get bonuses in spite of poor performance. Secretary of Defense Gates goes one further - we don't need what these systems do even if they could do it and were not too expensive! McCain backs them all. Damn national bankruptcy! Full speed ahead! Bring back Cold War relevancy! For one thing, most of these weapons systems generate Arizona jobs. But, they aren’t earmarks! They are much more expensive!
I backed McCain in 2000. Either his true nature has been finally revealed or he is not that same man. Too bad! I miss the Maverick.

Looking back at history, McCain appears to be Herbert Hoover incarnation! With the economy in a cliffhanger, McCain proclaimed yesterday that “the economic fundamentals are strong” and boosted his anti-regulation credentials before he backpedaled, of course. McCain is clearly out of touch with reality, if thinks “fundamentals are strong” in the middle of this economic meltdown. You have Alan Greenspan, probably the person most identifiable economist to the common American, admit that this is a ONE IN A CENTURY EVENT, and is the worst he's ever seen it. You have the collapse of the real estate market, where the majority of Americans have their wealth and retirement tied up in. You have large investment banks and giant securities failing one after the other, and John McCain thinks the economic fundamentals are strong”! WTF!

Herbert Hoover who was president during great depression (1929) which lasted over 10 years was the first to assert the soundness of the economy, even as it was evaporating around him. Unemployment soared to 25%, banks were failing left to right, millions had life savings wiped out overnight. (Does any of this sound familiar, folks?)…Despite McCain wishful assessment, we are absolutely in a very difficult period and more than any other time, we need someone that understands the gravity of the economy. Steady hand that can bring about a viable and equitable change. We can’t afford another Hoover and definitely not McCain/Palin at the WH, dumb and dumber, when we need our smartest people to guide this economic ship to safety.

McCain has lost all possibility of running a campaign based upon character. He is a proven liar. He is someone willing to forfeit his integrity for his political ambition. He is someone who thinks that Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president.

McCain thinks that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. He thinks that he can now claim to be in favor of regulation when he has stood firmly against any regulation of the finance industry for the past 25 years. He thinks that we have forgotten his role in the Keating 5 savings & loan fiasco.

Are you kidding me? Obama playing politics with American lives is not true and has been shown to not be true. McBush has been playing politics with American lives since he started running and the moron who has been president for the last 8 years has done it since day 1 also. You must work for the Republican Party to be able to ever say that and believe it. I needed that laugh.

What? This darn earpiece... inaudible mumble... the workers are strong? Oh right... the fundamentals are in crisis... total crisis! The workers are strong.

I walked right into that economic mud puddle, didn't I, and now I have mud all over my $600 loafers. Hrmph. What can we do? This Obama fella has some pretty forward-thinking ideas. My ideas are old and tired like my campaign tactics. Cindy's all zooted and spaced out... can't talk with her bout it...

Gee, Dan - think you could get any more biased in your headline and tone? You've just been waiting for a moment to have you, the vanguard of the Fourth Estate, pronounce a "change in momentum," or anything so that your candidate, Obama, can be perceived as moving ahead to Election Day. Give me a break. Please go away.

"If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2
beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real
Christian."

The truth: Being married to the same wife does not prove fidelity. Any fool can review Bill Clinton for example. He has been married to Hillary for just as long as Obama and is known to be one of the more frequent adulters out their today.

Having beautiful daughters is neither here nor there in regards to anything. It is what is know as an unrelated fact.

Now, as to being a real Christian, that depends on whether you adhere not just to one but to the majority of Christian teachings.

All of this of course is besides the point. The reason why conservatives dont like Obama is because he historically goes against conservative principals. He supports abortion, paramount to the murder of unborn children. He supports forced government redistribution of wealth, paramount to communism. He fights against free trade and the general concept of fairness in business. He promoted sub-prime loans with loose lending practices because it was part of his pandering approach to politics, hoping to trick the poor and the minorities into handing over their votes to him. As it turned out, as is often the case with socialist pandering, the poor and minorities are worse off because of sub-prime loose lending policies.

Good idea to try and switch the news of dismal polls and performance by Obama, his last nights Hollywood fling with the limo-libs and his $9 million take, to McCain. But, here's the secret the media knows already. Obama is not going to win. Hillary will run in 2012 and Obama will not be anywhere in sight. He's proven he can't handle it. The dream of a Marxist in the White House may have to wait another 4 years until Hillary runs again!

I am white and will vote for Obama. Why would I vote McBush becasue he was a POW 30 years ago? This country needs someone who can do something with the economy and that is not McCain by his OWN admission.

"McCain has a very defintitive record no matter how much the Obama/Media ticket tries to pretend that he doesn't."

You are right, and his record shows that he favored the deregulation that led to the mess we're currently in. His top advisor, Phil Gramm, wrote the bill that opened the door to this entire mess, and McCain voted with him.

His other top aid, Carly Fiorina, is the very symbol of the CEOs he claims to want to stop: she drove her company into the ground, shipped off thousands of American jobs, and left with a $22 million golden parachute.

can you really take McCain seriously about this stuff when the very people who caused it are his advisors? Please tell me you'r not that stupid.

But I digress . . . McCain does have a record -- and a very bad one at that.

Mccain with his lies and sleazy campaign proved he doesn't have character. Then he keeps talking about his POW experience even though the question is about music, his houses or anything that is not realted to war. That shows he lacks judgement. Now he is hiding behind Palin's skirt and running his campaign. That shows he doesn't have courage either. He also refuses to release his medical records. That proves he is mentally and physically unfit. He also thinks the economy is fundamentally strong. That proves his grasping capacity is zero or gone. So, what exactly are we looking for in this guy to vote him the President?

Shall we allow a man who cannot balance his check book, does not know what capital gains are and who led the waste of $56 million dollars as Head of the Annenberg educational project in Chicago lead our nation?

Thank Gog he has his teleprompter out....so someone can write down what these things are so he can read them off.....he is incapable of a single thought of his own

Voters would not give Democrats a third term after the Clinton presidency, despite a robust economy and a nation at peace. After the tumult of Bush's eight years, what might compel voters to reward the Republicans with a third consecutive term in control of the White House?
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Face it man. The voting in this election will be heavily rigged.

Sarah Palin is a LIGHTWEIGHT and I was a Republican until today when I switched to an independent. I will vote for Obama and her choice was the final nail in the coffin for me. She was chosen for political purposes only she has nothing to offer in terms of policy. No knowledge of anything at all and that was proven in the ONE interview she has given, the deer in the headlights look she should be familiar with. I don't hate the women I just think she is a right wing nut that has nothing to offer to a national ticket. And spare me the Ayers and Wright BS who cares about 30 years ago, I was 4. With Wright he is crazy so what it doesn't make Obama crazy or if that is the case then McCain is crazy now to because his running mate is and he has pastors that endorsed him and have said some pretty awful things.

Liberals begin salivating as they hear the ring of their savior’s media disciple’s bell. They run feverously through the maze of NOBAMA talking points hoping to be fed with the promise of the further destruction of America. Near the end of today’s maze, a political ad comes on and they stop and in a trance like state begin to chant like zombies NOBAMA, NOBAMA, NOBAMA.

We wait anxiously for the dynamic duo to show on Larry King live today. McCain will lead in with a grand proposal to fix our economy and keep banks tightly regulated to protect the American people; just as he has always done for 25 years. He'll be able to look King right in the eye and talk about how grand torture is and explain to that yellow bellied crook what it's all about to be a hero because your plane got shot down in a war. Being through that hardship has clearly set McCain up to be the hero of the day for the American people. We can all rally behind his luminous smile and impromptu ability to comfort the common American who is hurting in these times due to corrupt pedophile Bill Clinton and the Marxist dems. We already won the cold war once; so why should we have to fight it again? Let's take the voter rolls and put these Che revolutionaries in work camps for these restructuring companies of the past few months. They need cheaper labor after all.

That's just the first part of the interview too!!! Sarah will win over all women with her non-blinking absolution in regards to how women treat their bodies. She can mention how her special needs kid doesn't ever complain and gets everything he needs from her despite working 20 hour days (most of it dealing directly with national security). This leads directly into her fresh proposal for health care where children can work along side their parent as long as they contribute to productivity. She'll make sure investment is done so these kids can bring back manufacturing to our country even if it's just arts and crafts to start with. Then she'll mention her grand plan to build large observation towers all across Alaska dedicated to making sure Russia doesn't over step their proximity by building military bases within her sight. All questions about her readiness will be proved false with these absolute answers to all our problems.

An Obama senior advisor said that "McCain has 'no record' on financial regulatory issues" according to the USA Today.
McCain has a decades old record of advocating "more transparancy and more accountability" in the business sector.
According to Mark Bloomfield, president of the American Council for Capital Formation, "McCain advocates more regulation of big business.."
He has been expressing his concerns in this area for a LONG time. He has consistently called for greater regulation in opposion to the views of his own party.
McCain has a very defintitive record no matter how much the Obama/Media ticket tries to pretend that he doesn't.

How about Obama's record and/or experience in economic matters. He has NO record and NO experience. His SOLE experience before becoming a candidate was a period of 100 days in the US Senate where he spent his time writing two memoirs and had virtually NO legislative achievements!
Sen. Obama's major ECONOMIC experience to date consists of the deal he got from the convicted for corruption crook Rezco who, apparently because he likes Obama's smile, financed his home with a sweatheart deal that Mr and Mrs America would love to have.

So you thought that privatizing social security was a good thing? Fool that you are, you didn't realize this was just a plot to fill the coffers of Wall Street. Christopher Cox, a former congressman from Orange County, California, is the head of the SEC, appointed by Bush. Cox believes that Main Street should pay for the mistakes of Wall Street.

You want Jobs and a strong Economy? Then eliminate Tax Credits for Big Oil and increase Tax Credits for Renewable Energy. Renewable energy such as Wind, Solar, and Geothermal creates jobs in Manufacturing, Construction, Maintenance, Electronics, Networking, Mechanics, Fabrication, new materials development, Education, and dozens of other industries. Investment frees us from dependence on Foreign Oil, from polluting our environment to the extent we are doing so today, to decreasing the rate of natural disasters as a result of Global warming, and to providing Jobs and Security to Americans.

Unlike Oil, every dollar of PTC generates 8 dollars of investment, which would otherwise not exist. Given an 8 to 1 return in something that’s also improves the Security of our Country, and frees us from dependence on Middle Eastern Oil and borrowing money from China to pay for it, should not be a Partisan issue. Stop letting Big Oil companies dictate the future of America. Keep Jobs in America by expanding industries, educational, investment, and career opportunities for Americans.

How do you build a strong economy? The same way you did it before; invest in areas where you have a competitive advantage. We once had it in Auto, Steel, and machinery. We have it now in Wind and Solar natural resources. We don’t have to Drill for Black Gold, its right in front of us, Blowing across and Shining on our Faces.

In recent weeks, John McCain and the Republican Party have blatantly and without any shame adopted the Democratic campaign theme of “change”. It should be evident to an objective observer that Bush 43 and now McCain and Pailin are mere puppets to the true Republican national party leaders who control their strings. Cheney is one of the few of that inner cabal that have been calling the shots since the Nixon administration. They are in fact a continuation of the Nixon and Ford presidencies with only a disruption during the Carter and Clinton years. Bush 41( Head of the RNC during Nixon, former head of the CIA,VP to Reagan, and president is probably the real leader of this political Cosa Nostra if not a equal partner of this power sharing musical chairs game. His right and left hands have been Dick Cheney(former Sec.of Defense of Bush 41, former White House Chief of staff for Ford) and the other is Donald Rumsfeld(former Sec. of Defense for Ford and Bush 43,former special envoy to the Middle East during Reagan). Another member of this group, more likely a captain if not a full blown boss himself is James Baker (former C.O.S of Reagan, former Under Sec. of Commerce for Ford, former C.O.S and Sec of State for Bush 41, former Sec. of Treasury for Reagan, former chief legal advisor to Bush 43). Another captain or free lance enforcer is Karl Rove a college drop out and campaign manager for both Bush 41 and 43, also for Phil Gram who is McCain’s economic advisor.
Lets look at McCain’s staff of change.
On July 2, 2008, Steve Schmidt was given "full operational control" of McCain's campaign. Steve Schmidt prior to this was a top aide to Dick Cheney and a protégé to Karl Rove. Another advisor is Charles R. Black worked for Ronald Reagan's two Presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980 and he was a senior political adviser to the 1992 re-election campaign of George H.W. Bush. Another advisor is Randy Scheunemann. He was project director for the Project for the New American Century. A neo-conservative think tank founded by non other than Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bill Kristol and others in 1996. Other signatories to this group reads like a who’s who of the last 8 years of the republican administration.
These people have never cared about small town america or “values” All they care about is war profiteering. Many of the signatories have never served in the military. Cheney and Rove both dodged the draft. Look at the statement of principles by the PNAC. Rumsfeld was a good friend of Saddam Huessin in the 80’s Cheney didn’t want Nelson Mandela free. These are the real puppet masters, they throw out the talking points about the left of being elitist and not caring about middle america and these same guys other than Rove have advanced degrees and are worth no less than 10 million dollars. People who support them need to extricate their heads out of Limbaugh and Hannity’s asses and see what is really happening to them. McCain is not his own man he confuses stories of his real life with a book he read “The Gulag Archipelago", in which a fellow prisoner - not a guard - silently drew a cross in the dirt with a stick.” An ironic twist to all this is Eliot A. Cohen, a signatory to the PNAC "Statement of Principles", responded in The Washington Post: "There is no evidence that generals as a class make wiser national security policymakers than civilians. George C. Marshall, our greatest soldier statesman after George Washington, opposed shipping arms to Britain in 1940. His boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with nary a day in uniform, thought otherwise. Whose judgment looks better?"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/2581086/John-McCain-accused-of-plagiarising-Wikipedia-for-speeches.html. Even if you don’t like Obama there is no-way a sane person can want this continued blatant fleecing of our Nation.
Thes are all verifiable facts and can be found just with a google searches.
Other than the ultra affluent, how can anyone support the Republican Party? When will small town America realize that they are being duped into supporting the ultra-affluent agenda? The talking points of the right are so hypocritical that it becomes laughable. The red meat of the right is the so called Main stream Media as if Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. are not part of it. They demean celebrity status, however they tout one of their greatest presidents(Reagan) was an actor. They say they are the party of patriotism, yet many of the upper echelon of the party have never served, i.e. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Baker, Reagan. They say that they care about "Main Street" USA but only bail out the Whales of Wall Street. Yet small town America eat this tripe every year. They don't care about religion unless it can be used to stir up the base, nor science or technology unless there is a buck to be made. Small town America takes pride on its freedom but yet don't realize that over time we are becoming less free, ie wire tapping and other forms of domestic surveillance. They demean people of intelligence because they know many people of small town America don't have degrees and use it at a fake issue and call people who spent time in academia as elitist when many on the right serve on university boards and have part-time professorships. They say they are against affirmitive action but yet celebrate mediocrity, Bush43 and McCain graduating at the bottom of their classes. Who both came from already well established families and had all the opportunities and connections to excel. Why does small town America believes this is the party for them? Christian conservatives seem to the be the first ones who want to go to war and bomb someone before any diplomacy is tried. Why can't small town America and Christian conservatives realize they are being used as pawns just as much the Islamic fundamentalist are. Islamic fundamentalist come from small town Middle East and given the same kind of talking points as the evangelicals. They want prayer in school, no choice available to women, and believe to the core that their ideas about worship and country are the best. Wake up small town America you are being duped.
Talking about who is more patriotic, symbols, lipstick and wearing pins are nothing more than distractions to the real issue of how a few select group of people have held power almost continuously for over 30 years. Yes the left has their own political power groups but none have been so effective at pushing forward an agenda that is fundamentally bad for the U.S. and in a larger view the entire world. I stress again the now defunct PNAC and the AIPAC have been slowly pushing us closer to another World War. Bush41 and et al have been doing this and no one calls them on it. Every Republican administration has basically the same people recycled since Nixon. Just do a little research and you will see that these people are just pushing this agenda of some kind of Pax Americana and not taking into account that maybe other nations of the world might not like that and if not bomb them.
Many people who support the Republican party, really need to read "1984" by George Orwell and see how we as nation have been inching closer to that type of society. People think this story is about a communist society, but it is more about how a society is kept in a constant state of fear in order for the ruling class to stay in control. Doublespeak, patriotism to the point of frenzy, censorship, erosion of civil liberties (not respecting the Constitution) is happening right in front of us. The consolidation of government (the executive branch has never been more powerful than ever, gridlocked legislature with only two parties for representation, a judiciary that just kowtows to the executive branch). No real independent journalism. Cameras placed on every street corner. This may sound like delusional conspiracy stuff, but I implore people to research for themselves to really see what is happening to them. People think this could never happen here in the U.S. but it is already happening, slowly, incrementally all under the guise of "keeping America safe"

Who has done nothing in his life other than writing book about black racist and polygamist father?

Bad choice for America...

Voter now truly believe Democrats want to sc*** them with an incompetent candidate
*****************************
Yeah, as opposed to a wife swaping, gold digging, old fart who wants to be President (even for a little while) before he crokes to please his rich, trophy wife.
Oh, did I memtion hes a war hero? That definately qualifies him.

Isn't George W. Bush the president? Without Carl Rove's media instincts he has shrunk off the scene.

The problem is now, not next year. Neither McCain's nor Obama's words are going to make much difference until they actually become president. They are making it up as they go along to appease the pollsters.

This meltdown is bigger than a campaign media cycle. It won't be on to the next Palinesque feeding frenzy next week for the people impacted.

"I was confused about the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, but I think I understand this election a little better now.

Let me see if I have this straight.....

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic,
different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black
President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that
registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,
spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000
people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services
committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13
million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs,
Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have
any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6
years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the
governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become
the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2
beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real
Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, then left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a true Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper
use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other
option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen
daughter ends up pregnant, you exemplify responsibility.

* If your wife is a Harvard lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law
firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up
to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction
and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was
a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your
family represents the core values of this country.

I'm an Obama supporter, but I must say that I'm not sure if he (or anybody- Dem or Rep) can fix all of America's problems in 4 years, particularly the huge deficit. I just hope that, if elected, Obama is successful in his first term or the Republicans will be right back in the White House in 2012.

If this campaign is reduced to a test of character, McCain lost months ago. The strait out lies he and Palin tell, repeatedly, are testiment to a character we can not trust. He always steals Obama's words and plans, and that is a clever tactic. But where are his words and his plans? Now he is for regulation. What makes him think we will believe him? It is sad to see a man of honor lose it all.

scootmandubious: "CNN did a 5-minute clip that highlighted the lies of McCain/Palin. Check it out, along with a proposed new line of attack for the Obama campaign to take, at:

yada yada yada ..."

Still waiting for that CNN clip that shows all the lies, halftruths, no truths, misdirections, etc coming from the Obama camp. Huh? Like that would ever happen.

As to CNN, let's fact check the fact-checkers at CNN.

I will take this one example. Most of the other CNN claims are pretty much the same bad leftist journalism they are normally up to.

McCain Camp: Obama wants to teach kindergartners sex education.

Obama Camp: That is a lie, he just wanted to teach them about inappropriate touching.

CNN: That is a lie, he just wanted to teach them about inappropriate touching.

The Truth: The Obama bill that he sponsored says nothing about restricting what can be taught to kindergartners. Yes, in order to ease the fears of parents Obama claimed that it would be restricted to just teaching about inappropriate touching.

Strangely missing from the actual wording of the bill is any comment, restriction or limits to teaching kindergartners only about inappropriate touching.

CNN: But that is what Obama said so we take it for gosple.

The Truth: Taking Obama's claim over the actual wording of the bill is just plain lazy leftist Obama lap-dogging. I was easily able to find the bill's wording. Where exactly does CNN reporters keep their heads up? Too lazy for you nitwit leftists to do your job or does doing your job make Obama look bad?

The wording of the bill allows "comprehensive sex education" to be taught to ALL LEVELS of school "K - 12" from Kindergartners to Seniors in high school.

The wording of the bill does have a vague reference to teaching "age appropriate" issues.

The wording of the bill does not define age appropriate. The wording of the bill does not limit what is taught to kindergartners. The wording of the bill does not restrict the teaching to kindergartners to anything specific, let alone to teaching just inappropriate touching.

Truth? McCain was dead on the mark. The Ad was accurate. Obama was caught in a lie and CNN lapdogs came to his rescue.

I think he needs her to do the email for him.
Pluswhich, if she's not on her private plane with him the campaign would have to pay for it. With her there, she's just "giving him a ride" so it's ok and not a reportable contribution.

Wonder if it is true that the actual candidate that bumps off mutual opponent will win in November regardless of issues and poll numbers?

Apparently the mutual opponent is wealthy and exposed corruption within both parties and is presently targeted.

The question is how?

Will the GOP use Guiliani-like mob ties such as used by his protege, ex-NYPD commissioner and may be doing up to 140 years of jail time? Or Gotti, Jr. who is currently on trial for conspiracy and murder?

Will Dem use an OJ Simpson-like black convict with jail time? Coincidentally, OJ's trial with robbery and kidnapping is today too.

Will both political parties use the popular law enforcement practice of 'sweetheart exchange deals' where convicts commit crime/murder in exchange for less jail time, conveniently covered up and real culprits not publicly suspected?

Having shared this information, do we too have to worry about our personal safety? For example, does my husband have to worry about his life when he is doing his daily jog after work in the Hackensack/Bogota/Teaneck, NJ areas? Do we have to worry about the tampering of our food, water and air inside our home since our habits and plans are known in advanced due to bugging devices in private and public?

The brunt of the AIG/Freddie Mac costs will be paid by the middle income tax payers. John McCain doesn't think the millionaires who made out like bandits during the past decade should pay their fair share. They still have their profits despite the stock downturns. They are far better off, even paying higher taxes. The middle class have lost, lost, lost ground on annual income and worse, on their pensions and annuities for retirement. Corporations continue to pay the CEO's but shed all responsibility for pensions to the "fundamentals" of our economy.

Why is the media refusing to teach an important history lesson to voters? They never even whisper the phrase, "The Keating Five." Why are they still protecting John McCain and misleading the voters? McCain himself admits his involvement in the Keating Savings and Loan scandal was the worst thing in his entire political career. Reminders of his behavior 20 years ago is absolutely critical to voters, now. They don't know his involvement in one of the worst financial debacles of the last century. We surely don't need is poor judgement calling the shots, now! His penchant for unregulated investments, outrageous profits and payoffs should certainly get voters to say, "Stay away from my money, John! We don't need your kind of money maverick non-sense!"

The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB).

The U.S. Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of 747 savings and loan associations (S&Ls) in the United States. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.[1].

The concomitant slowdown in the finance industry and the real estate market may have been a contributing cause of the 1990-1991 economic recession. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of new homes constructed per year dropped from 1.8 million to 1 million, the lowest rate since World War II.[2]

The Keating Five scandal was prompted by the activities of one particular savings and loan: Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, California. Lincoln's chairman was Charles Keating, who ultimately served five years in prison for his corrupt mismanagement of Lincoln.[3] In the four years since Keating's American Continental Corporation (ACC) had purchased Lincoln in 1984, Lincoln's assets had increased from $1.1 billion to $5.5 billion.[4] Such savings and loan associations had been deregulated in the early 1980s, allowing them to make highly risky investments with their depositors' money, a change of which Keating took advantage.[4] Lincoln's investments took the form of buying land, taking equity positions in real estate development projects, and buying high-yield junk bonds.[5]

McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981.[8] Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.[14] In addition, McCain's wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard Keating's jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.[6][15]

The core allegation of the Keating Five affair is that Keating had made contributions of about $1.3 million to various U.S. Senators, and he called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. The regulators backed off, to later disastrous consequences.

When the celebrity ad came out about Obama, we were supposed to "lighten up", they were funny, we were told by the Republicans!
Sarah Palin became a "rock star" overnight, and that was OAKY.
But when Obama attracted 85,000 plus at the Dem. Convention, that was a disgrace.

Spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

Deregulation or adherence to loose lending policies? Which caused our current problem?

1) Cause has been well known for years to be loose lending policies. Even before the housing bust wise economists stated that loose lending policies would lead to business failure and house loan defaults.

2) The law allowed loose lending policies well before the Gramm 1999 law. These issues are not connected.

3) The Gramm law was in regards to US banks being able to diversify. Something the foreign banks have been allowed to do for decades.

4) Gramm himself, along with other republicans warned Clinton and democrats that we needed to tighten loose lending policies.

5) Clinton refused saying that tight lending policies would hurt the minorities and the poor. Hmmm, dem pandering at its finest.

6) Obama, Dodd, Franks, Bill, Hill are all on record as being in favor of sub-prime loans in order to pander to their base.

7) Deregulation is a standard red-herring that dems like to bring up. They have been successful in the past due to a stupid electorate.

8) If the Gramm bill was bad, then why not blame Clinton who signed it into law? He had the power to veto the bill and win. Reps did not have enough votes to overcome a veto.

9) Recapping: It was reps against loose lending policies and it was democrats in favor of loose lending policies.

McCain appears tired and drained of all original content. The most he can rustle up is sort of self rightious indignation based on his POW credentials. But all and all he seems a captive to his own POW days and cannot extricate himself from the Vietnam era. Even his " We are all Georgians" statement comes from JFK. And, his statements that US soldiers pleaded with him "just let us win" sounded suspiciouly straight from a script from a Sylvester Stallone Rambo movie.

Most of the time McCain is usurping the language and message of the Dems. Just the other day I heard him say "enough is enough" - whoaaaa, wasn't that in the opening of Obama's convention speech?

All of the real ideas are coming from the Dems who have had to stash all their hopes and dreams, bills and policies for our country in their hearts for almost eight full years of Republican political dominance.

It is a moral hazard to reward the Republicans with another four years. What incentive is there for them to change, if America votes in McCain?

This idea that trading on Wall Street motivated by greed is immoral and must be punished shows just how impoverished McCain-o-nomics are.

Why else would people trade on Wall Street, if not for greed? For that matter, why would a person go to a hard job eight hours a day, five days a week, if not for "greed"?

A sensible system wouldn't excoriate people for their motives, but would regulate their conduct in the public interest.

The regulation that's most lacking right now, as best I can tell, is full public disclosure of the financial risks and underpinnings of complex new financial instruments. Issuers of publicly traded common stock have been required to make such disclosure for nearly a century.

"His [McCain's] best hope of winning is to make the campaign a test of character."

Are you kidding me? Have you not been paying attention to the snarky, mean-spirited vitriol coming out of the McCain-Palin camp ever since their convention? IF character was ever an advantage for McCain, he's thrown that out the window.

McCain can no longer make this campaign about "character", those days are over for him -- his speeches are doddering and his bevy of lies transparent, he is becoming more of a cartoon character with each passing day.

If American workers are the best in the world, than McCain needs to explain why our wages have gone down since he and GOP took over the government 10 years ago (let's not forget that republicans controlled congress since the 1998 mid-term elections).

If he's going to crack down on irresonsible CEOs, then he needs to expalin to us why Carly Fiorina is his chief surrogate. She destronyed Hewlett Packard, and said she wished she had fired 1,000 more American workers before leaving with her $22 million golden parachute. Fiorina, like so many of McCain's advisors including Phil Gramm who started the houseing loan mess, were the beneficiaries of McCain's hands-off recklessness as a senator.

When it comes to the economy and working men and women, you simply cannot take McCain or Slick Sarah seriously, and you certainly cannot trust them.

It is not splitting hairs to say that voters gave Gore a 3rd Democratic term. A consortium of newspapers determined beyond a shadow of doubt well after Bush v. Gore that Gore won Florida. And that does not include the butterfly ballot, voter list scrubbing (felons and their many namesakes), and blatant intimidation

As with his Monday misstep, once again the message is mixed. Guns blazing, McCain is promising to ride into town to -- oversee the creation of a commission to study the problem.
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HE'S A SENILE, DEGENERATE, OLD MAN!! JUST LOOK AT HIM!!! GEEZ LOUISE!!!

The Bush Administration pre-2004 elections was putting people into houses through these questionable sub-prime mortgage loans in record numbers ... He got their vote ... The so called American Dream was defined as a fraudulent dream or a nightmare. Now lets see who pays for it ... as we continue to bail out Wall Street. Then McCain has the gall to have us worrying over Obama raising taxes ... millions without health care coverage ... so many people losing their homes? Wow!!

First the lies about his opponent's intentions: sex ed for kids, tax increases (not true!)... pigs with lipstick on of all things! Now the blatant lack of knowledge of the fundamentals of economics and the economy. Then his record. How could anybody sane elect him president. Oh, I forgot the religious extremists. Abortion, abortion, abortion... that's all they want to drivle about, on and on. And that's gonna decide who will rule the free world in future? Give me a break!!!

John "Mr. De-regulation" McCain is now the Great Reformer? And monkeys fly out of my butt.

McCain does have experience at this sort of thing. He was involded with a banking meltdown once before, the Keating 5.

He used his office to pressure investigators to lay off the probe. McCain's economic adviser today, Phil Gramm, was up to his eyeballs in that banking meltdown, and is the face of deregulation of the markets we are now seeing melting before us. The guy that said we are whiners and all this stuff s in our heads.

McCain is talking like he's been on Mars for the last 25 years, and never been in the Senate! He might as well have been on Mars.

I'm a Republican, and this is an election we deserve to lose. The Rove-Bush-Palin "Christian" populist wing needs to let go of our party. Governance is actually a set of skills. It's not just about campaigning. I am sick of this.

The loser is our country from a failed economic formula expounded and exaggerated year by year since the Reagan era of no regulation and destruction of the legitimate role of government. If we keep it up we will be just a banana republic that just happens to have a strong military at the disposal of the rich. The religious right can revel in their new hero but everything produced by the Bush Administration and the republican agenda for this country is destroying us. They very simply offer more of the same except with even more religious dogma.

Corporate profitability in some industries and as a result, some corporations have reduced capital spending (maybe due to inflation and higher borrowing costs), making due with what they have and that too may be one reason why there is a increase in productivity. It's good for corporations to go through periodic belt tighten now and then as the strong companies come out stronger.

The voters wouldn't give the democrats a third term because Gore was a loser. just like Kerry and Obama. If you haven't figured that out yet, you're dumber than dirt. Gore never won anything so wake up and get a life.
The roots of the current financial fiasco were sown in the Clinton administration, and an Obama advisor named Raines, well, let the Investors' Business Daily continue the sad tale:

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.

As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.

Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.

Now, why would the voters dare to give Obama a victory when he says he will take profits away from corporations, disarm our military(which he treasoned when he was in Iraq), side with muslims when the chips are down, and generally implement socialist policies?
All you whiners with your hands out need to reflect on some of the easy choices you made in life, and understand that there are consequences to them.
If you still feel that you are owed something, just go to your neighbor and ask for some of his money. That's what the socialist democrats will do, only they will take it away from him.

"The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men."

The voters did give the Dems a third term in 2000. The election was stolen by Florida Republicans and the US Supreme Court naied it down. If you have a problem with that you need to do more reading. McCain has reverted to the custom of his party which has managed to elect a Bush the last three times it won by lying, smearing, and distracting people with phony social issues. They get into office and the people who voted them in don't get their investment back in for instance abortion. And this is because they really can't touch that rail or the effect would be electric, as in social security. McCain has so melded himself with the failed presidency of Bush that it is quite astonishing he has managed to stay even with Obama. His rabbit out of the hat trick with Palen has about run its course as she is shown to be what any objective person can figure out, all flash and no substance, and what there is of it is all anathema to all but the fanatics in control of the Republican party. School is out John. Head on back to one of your 9 houses and the mess you and your party have made will be cleaned up by others.

McCain has said he doesn't know as much about the economy as he should. Instead, he's relied on folks like Phil Gramm who substitute an ecomonic ideology for a working economic policy.

Please let's remember that the trickle-down, unfettered market ideology brought a record deficit under Ronald Reagon. It also brought about the Savings and Loan Crisis under the GOP. I hope what's happening now is a nail in the coffin of GOP economic ideology.

Bob Woodward was on Charlie Rose last night. He said it was Cheney (a convert to Ronald Reagan's economic ideology) who pushed the tax cut for the very rich.

But you have to remember that the "stock market" is not the same thing as the "economy".

Sure the unemplyment rate is up but pretty much around 4.5%- 5% is the frictional norm for unemployment. Interest rates are still relatively low. Were it not for the push on community banking and lending money to people in communities who can't repay easily there wouldn't be a credit/financial crisis. Once the foreclosures level out, and as the inventory of houses is reduced, things will start getting back to normal. This is a correction! Sort of like when the bogus jobs and companies in the telecomm and dot.com booms under Clinton went south.

Real GDP growth under Clinton was substantially higher. Median incomes really did rise -- not fall as under Bush. There was low inflation. There was lower unemployment coupled with HIGHER labor force participation.

Republican economics is simply a failure. The excuses, propaganda and BS offered by "stick" can't change it. Let's look at the specifics.

The Republican philosophy of deficits, debt and decline that has dominated this country since 1980, and which McCain pledges to continue, is the real issue.

According to Republican economic dogma, tax cuts lead to higher private investment, higher growth, and a shrinkage of government spending relative to GDP. Thus, for the past 30 years, the Republicans have refused to tax the wealthy in order to pay for the public investment in infrastructure, education, job training and research necessary to keep this country competitive in age of accelerating globalization and technological change.

But it ain't true. Republican policies result in slow growth and ever increasing government debt and trade imbalances as the US continues to act like a great power, provide "bread and circuses" in the form of a stagnant and unsustainable standard of living based on foreign borrowing rather than growing production here.

Conversely, more progressive taxation and greater investment of the proceeds in infrastructure, education, job training and research lead to the opposite result: (1) lower deficits and long term interest rates, (2) higher business investment, (3) higher growth and (4) increased incomes at ALL income levels.
----------------------
COMPARE Clinton and Bush 43 on the fundamentals:

Very sorry picture. Under Bush, corporate profits have grown in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP, BUT fixed busines investment as a percentage of GDP has decline. Put otherwise, corporations are making more than ever under Bush BUT investing less than they did under Clinton. Under Clinton, investment actually exceed profit. Under Bush, investment is lower than profit.

LOOK AT THE STOCK MARKET, which tells the same story:

1. The DJIA more than tripled under high tax/low deficit Clinton -- it has lost value under low tax/high deficit Bush after adjustment for inflation:
12/31/92: 3,284.29
01/20/01: 10,586.62
09/17/08: 10,762.98

2. S&P 500. This more than tripled under high tax/low deficit Clinton low tax/high deficit Bush and even more real value when inflation is taken into account.
12/31/92: 415.74
01/20/01: 1,336.66
09/17/08: 1,173.16

3. NASDAQ composite. This more than quadrupled under high tax/low deficit Clinton (even AFTER the bursting of dot.com bubble, which took it to 5000 or so) -- it has lost nominal value under low tax/high deficit Bush and eve more real value when inflation is taken into account.
12/31/92: 599.26
01/20/01: 2,710.05
09/17/08: 2,132.50

Under the high debt Bush economy, Wall Street's main function has become slicing and dicing this country for resale to foreigners in order to repay our debt, both the government's debt to foreigners and the even larger aggregate US debt to foreigners. The housing bubble was an effort to mortgage this country's housing to foreigners at fraudulently hyped values. The current meltdown is foreigners saying no dice. The government's selective interventions are an effort to prevent foreigner creditors from walking away completely, which would shut down our feckless government completely and throw the economy into a depression. You can be sure that the Fed/Treasury's decision as to whether to do a "bail out" is purely a function of how much of a distressed entity's debt is held by foreigners. Much of it in the case of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. Not so much when it comes to Lehman.

-----------------------------

McCAIN, the worst Presidential candidate in our history, is promising to continue the same policies: reduce taxtion on the rich and public investment funded by same even though Republican economic dogma, whether you call it “trickle down,” Reagonomics, "Supply Side economics" or Voodoo, DOES NOT PROMOTE INVESTMENT and GROWTH. Rather,it has the opposite effect, just as its critics charge.
. As our roads crumble and our educational system declines, businesses will continue to invest less in this country, leading to even lower growth and higher levels of income inequality than under Bush.

THIRD WORLD HERE WE COME.

THANKS TO WING-NUT ECONOMICS, WHICH IS FEUDALISM, NOT CAPITALISM.
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PS.
People who learn their "economics" from college drop outs like Rush Limbaugh don't get it.

The only thing Palin has done is create a bubble for the repubs which is overdue for a burst. Doesn't help that McCain's economic surrogates are comprised of incompetent buffoons with the likes of Fiorina who was fired from HP for sinking the company and now you're telling she is advising McCain? Then you have Mr. derugulater himself, Phil Gramm who has a huge hand in the current meltdown. Can anyone give me a good reason why Mr.Magoo is good candidate to fix our problems?

Here's an easy, economics 101 question for Sen. McCain: where can I exchange my cache of economic fundamentals for some cash to pay the mortgage and buy food? And while you're listening sir, do you have any tips for negotiating with insurance companies after your plan eliminates my group coverage? Oh, and one more: are you still supporting the bush proposal to create private stock market accounts to supplement social security, or are you conveniently opposed to it this week? Sorry, but one more: could you remind me again why I should vote for you? I'm just a little confused about that one.

Hey Mr. McCain...
you say "Country First", so why don't you withdraw from the race then? Your "Deregulation Mantra" caused this mess, so you should own up. This is what happens when you get rid of the referee. A healthy free-capital market like everything needs rules. So Mr. McCain the Wall Street collapse is YOUR fault. Withdraw and show you really care about this country.

McCain's two biggest worries: the economy and Palin. The economy stacks the electorate against him, and Palin is part of a coup by Republicans who are against him. They are _hoping_ he doesn't make it through his first term should he win the election! And they are turning him into a ventriloquist puppet for exactly the kind of nonsense he has always hated. I was for McCain, and I am still - but I can't vote for this ticket that is an internal play for the soul of the Republican party. I'm the wrong kind of Republican.

McCain knows all about bailing out rich bankers and screwing over middle class and poor people, he's been doing it for years.

*McCain - Founding Member of the Keating Five:

McCain was one of the "Keating Five," congressmen investigated on ethics charges for strenuously helping convicted racketeer Charles Keating after he gave them large campaign contributions and vacation trips.
Charles Keating was convicted of racketeering and fraud in both state and federal court after his Lincoln Savings & Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $3.4 billion. His convictions were overturned on technicalities; for example, the federal conviction was overturned because jurors had heard about his state conviction, and his state charges because Judge Lance Ito (yes, that judge) screwed up jury instructions. Neither court cleared him, and he faces new trials in both courts.)
Though he was not convicted of anything, McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating after Keating gave McCain at least $112,00 in contributions. In the mid-1980s, McCain made at least 9 trips on Keating's airplanes, and 3 of those were to Keating's luxurious retreat in the Bahamas. McCain's wife and father-in-law also were the largest investors (at $350,000) in a Keating shopping center; the Phoenix New Times called it a "sweetheart deal."

*McCain - Mafia Ties:

In 1995, McCain sent birthday regards, and regrets for not attending, to Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonano, the head of the New York Bonano crime family, who had retired to Arizona. Another politician to send regrets was Governor Fife Symington, who has since been kicked out of office and convicted of 7 felonies relating to fraud and extortion.
.http://www.realchange.org/mccain.htm
.

McCain's only argument now is that because he and his Wall Street buds led us in to this mess (with his chief economic advisor Phil Gramm even passing the deregulation bill with his name on it), they are in the best position to lead us out because they know the way?

As I go along, I doubt more and more the electorate's ability to making intelligent and discerning choices. If negative campaigning didn't work, the candidates wouldn't use it. If the voters could stand to hear the truth (Are those auto industry jobs really coming back to Michigan, John? No, they're not.) the election would be much different. The average voter is "spectacularly uninformed". You probably shouldn't be allowed to vote unless you can name the three branches of government.

HL Mencken: "The American people know what they want and they deserve to get it, good and hard."

...this is how peeeuuu Palin was greeted on her return to Alaska from the "Campaign to Nowhere......

Bush In A Skirt
Palin She Be Failin
Jesus Was a Community Organizer
Palin: Thanks But No Thanks
Smearing Alaska's Good Name One Scandal @ a Time
Candidate To Nowhere
Rape Kits Should Be Free
Voted For Her Once: Never Again!
Community Organizers are the Real Patriots
Barbies for War
I Shall Not Be Pandered To
Give Palin Your Vote AND Your Draft Age Child
Sarah Palin: So Far Right She's Wrong
Alaska Is Not Frisco
Coat Hangers for McCain
Sarah Palin, Undoing 150 Years of American Feminism
Hockey Mama for Obama (on a hockey stick)

He is a serial adulterer and womanizer -- he makes Clinton look chaste.

He is an uneducated, ignorant slob -- he makes W look like a genius.

He is a dishonest, dishonorable race-baiting, fear mongering politician -- even Rove thinks his campaign is dirty.

He is a doddering, senile old man on the verge of death and devoid of any courage or energy he ever had. He allowed the right wing of his party, those who previously tormented him and who he called "agents of intolerance," to dictate his choice of VP nominee, a person who given his age and condition will probably succeed him, and who is totally unfit.

Obama will RAISE TAXES
He is not like us ... wink wink
He is like Paris Hilton ...
He does not have enough experience ... forget GW ... and he has as much as sarah they both have a family and children
he is not a patriot ... he wants us to lose in Iraq!!

But you have to remember that the "stock market" is not the same thing as the "economy".

Sure the unemplyment rate is up but pretty much around 4.5%- 5% is the frictional norm for unemployment. Interest rates are still relatively low. Were it not for the push on community banking and lending money to people in communities who can't repay easily there wouldn't be a credit/financial crisis. Once the foreclosures level out, and as the inventory of houses is reduced, things will start getting back to normal. This is a correction! Sort of like when the bogus jobs and companies in the telecomm and dot.com booms under Clinton went south.

PALIN IS GOING TO THE U.N. FOR WHAT? TO TALK TO THEM. SHE CAN'T TALK TO THE MEDIA OR THE VOTERS, BUT SHE CAN TO TO THE U.N. FOR PHOTO OPPS AND APPEAR...AND I STRESS APPPEAR, TO COME OFF AS SOMEONE WITH FOREIGN EXPERICE, YEAH RIGHT. I GUESS SOMEONE FORGOT TO TELL HER SEEING RUSSIA FOR YOUR HOUSE DOES NOT QUALIFY YOU TO BE A MASTER OF FOREIGN POLICY. ALL YOU WOMAN WHO LIKE AND SUPPORT THIS WOMAN, WHAT A BUNCH OF HYPICRITES. IF ANYTHING, I WOULD THINK, CONDY RICE WOULD MAKE A MUCH MUCH BETTER V.P. THEN PALIN. I MEAN COME ON THAT'S A NO BRAINER

In recent weeks, John McCain and the Republican Party have blatantly and without any shame adopted the Democratic campaign theme of “change”. It should be evident to an objective observer that Bush 43 and now McCain and Pailin are mere puppets to the true Republican national party leaders who control their strings. Cheney is one of the few of that inner cabal that have been calling the shots since the Nixon administration. They are in fact a continuation of the Nixon and Ford presidencies with only a disruption during the Carter and Clinton years. Bush 41( Head of the RNC during Nixon, former head of the CIA,VP to Reagan, and president is probably the real leader of this political Cosa Nostra if not a equal partner of this power sharing musical chairs game. His right and left hands have been Dick Cheney(former Sec.of Defense of Bush 41, former White House Chief of staff for Ford) and the other is Donald Rumsfeld(former Sec. of Defense for Ford and Bush 43,former special envoy to the Middle East during Reagan). Another member of this group, more likely a captain if not a full blown boss himself is James Baker (former C.O.S of Reagan, former Under Sec. of Commerce for Ford, former C.O.S and Sec of State for Bush 41, former Sec. of Treasury for Reagan, former chief legal advisor to Bush 43). Another captain or free lance enforcer is Karl Rove a college drop out and campaign manager for both Bush 41 and 43, also for Phil Gram who is McCain’s economic advisor.
Lets look at McCain’s staff of change.
On July 2, 2008, Steve Schmidt was given "full operational control" of McCain's campaign. Steve Schmidt prior to this was a top aide to Dick Cheney and a protégé to Karl Rove. Another advisor is Charles R. Black worked for Ronald Reagan's two Presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980 and he was a senior political adviser to the 1992 re-election campaign of George H.W. Bush. Another advisor is Randy Scheunemann. He was project director for the Project for the New American Century. A neo-conservative think tank founded by non other than Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bill Kristol and others in 1996. Other signatories to this group reads like a who’s who of the last 8 years of the republican administration.
These people have never cared about small town america or “values” All they care about is war profiteering. Many of the signatories have never served in the military. Cheney and Rove both dodged the draft. Look at the statement of principles by the PNAC. Rumsfeld was a good friend of Saddam Huessin in the 80’s Cheney didn’t want Nelson Mandela free. These are the real puppet masters, they throw out the talking points about the left of being elitist and not caring about middle america and these same guys other than Rove have advanced degrees and are worth no less than 10 million dollars. People who support them need to extricate their heads out of Limbaugh and Hannity’s asses and see what is really happening to them. McCain is not his own man he confuses stories of his real life with a book he read “The Gulag Archipelago", in which a fellow prisoner - not a guard - silently drew a cross in the dirt with a stick.” An ironic twist to all this is Eliot A. Cohen, a signatory to the PNAC "Statement of Principles", responded in The Washington Post: "There is no evidence that generals as a class make wiser national security policymakers than civilians. George C. Marshall, our greatest soldier statesman after George Washington, opposed shipping arms to Britain in 1940. His boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with nary a day in uniform, thought otherwise. Whose judgment looks better?"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/2581086/John-McCain-accused-of-plagiarising-Wikipedia-for-speeches.html. Even if you don’t like Obama there is no-way a sane person can want this continued blatant fleecing of our Nation.
Thes are all verifiable facts and can be found just with a google searches.
Other than the ultra affluent, how can anyone support the Republican Party? When will small town America realize that they are being duped into supporting the ultra-affluent agenda? The talking points of the right are so hypocritical that it becomes laughable. The red meat of the right is the so called Main stream Media as if Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. are not part of it. They demean celebrity status, however they tout one of their greatest presidents(Reagan) was an actor. They say they are the party of patriotism, yet many of the upper echelon of the party have never served, i.e. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Baker, Reagan. They say that they care about "Main Street" USA but only bail out the Whales of Wall Street. Yet small town America eat this tripe every year. They don't care about religion unless it can be used to stir up the base, nor science or technology unless there is a buck to be made. Small town America takes pride on its freedom but yet don't realize that over time we are becoming less free, ie wire tapping and other forms of domestic surveillance. They demean people of intelligence because they know many people of small town America don't have degrees and use it at a fake issue and call people who spent time in academia as elitist when many on the right serve on university boards and have part-time professorships. They say they are against affirmitive action but yet celebrate mediocrity, Bush43 and McCain graduating at the bottom of their classes. Who both came from already well established families and had all the opportunities and connections to excel. Why does small town America believes this is the party for them? Christian conservatives seem to the be the first ones who want to go to war and bomb someone before any diplomacy is tried. Why can't small town America and Christian conservatives realize they are being used as pawns just as much the Islamic fundamentalist are. Islamic fundamentalist come from small town Middle East and given the same kind of talking points as the evangelicals. They want prayer in school, no choice available to women, and believe to the core that their ideas about worship and country are the best. Wake up small town America you are being duped.
Talking about who is more patriotic, symbols, lipstick and wearing pins are nothing more than distractions to the real issue of how a few select group of people have held power almost continuously for over 30 years. Yes the left has their own political power groups but none have been so effective at pushing forward an agenda that is fundamentally bad for the U.S. and in a larger view the entire world. I stress again the now defunct PNAC and the AIPAC have been slowly pushing us closer to another World War. Bush41 and et al have been doing this and no one calls them on it. Every Republican administration has basically the same people recycled since Nixon. Just do a little research and you will see that these people are just pushing this agenda of some kind of Pax Americana and not taking into account that maybe other nations of the world might not like that and if not bomb them.
Many people who support the Republican party, really need to read "1984" by George Orwell and see how we as nation have been inching closer to that type of society. People think this story is about a communist society, but it is more about how a society is kept in a constant state of fear in order for the ruling class to stay in control. Doublespeak, patriotism to the point of frenzy, censorship, erosion of civil liberties (not respecting the Constitution) is happening right in front of us. The consolidation of government (the executive branch has never been more powerful than ever, gridlocked legislature with only two parties for representation, a judiciary that just kowtows to the executive branch). No real independent journalism. Cameras placed on every street corner. This may sound like delusional conspiracy stuff, but I implore people to research for themselves to really see what is happening to them. People think this could never happen here in the U.S. but it is already happening, slowly, incrementally all under the guise of "keeping America safe"

Great article and I always enjoy your stuff, but I wanted to point out one little hair-splitting detail. I understand your point that the Democrats couldn't win in 2000 even in prosperous times, but technically it's a falsehood to say that VOTERS would not give the Dems a third term. Even if you take the Florida vote at face value, the VOTERS of this country DID give Al Gore a majority -- as in he won the popular vote. It was the electoral college where the Democrats lost the presidency.

May I congratulate you, once again, on a thoughtful, insightful article? You impressed me with your thoughtfulness on Washington Week. But these recent articles are even better. You grasp a big picture that helps makes sense of a host (perhaps a host of overwhelming) details. THANK YOU.

We the people ... now have shares in Fanny, Freddie, AIG. What's next before GW leaves office? Haliburton

If Democrats were in power ... I would say "Throw the bums out ... clean house!!"

Race baiting, sexism, hate and fear mongering will not cut it with the American public.

The VOTE is the only exercise of true power "We the people ..." have ... and we missed an opportunity 4 years ago to change course ... Thanks to Osama Bin Laden terror messages and the fear mongering on the political trail.

I can just see the FOX spin machine being turned up from bullsh.t to maximum bullsh.t speed. I made sure I did not eat dinner (for fear of barfing it up or throwing my food at my TV and turned on FOX. Bill O'Reilly is just a yelling these days at everyone on his show. He's mad because he could not break Obama on his show and get a major gaft. Sean Hannity's head is getting bigger and bigger and is about to explode. By the time Sarah is interviewed on his show, no one will care. They know McBush has no chance now that the economy is back in the forefront and not SARAh

Looking back at history, McCain appears to be Herbert Hoover incarnation! With the economy in a cliffhanger, McCain proclaimed yesterday that “the economic fundamentals are strong” and boosted his anti-regulation credentials before he backpedaled, of course. McCain is clearly out of touch with reality, if thinks “fundamentals are strong” in the middle of this economic meltdown. You have Alan Greenspan, probably the person most identifiable economist to the common American, admit that this is a ONE IN A CENTURY EVENT, and is the worst he's ever seen it. You have the collapse of the real estate market, where the majority of Americans have their wealth and retirement tied up in. You have large investment banks and giant securities failing one after the other, and John McCain thinks the economic fundamentals are strong”! WTF!
Hoover took similar stands at the beginning of the great depression which lasted over 10 years! I hope and pray that this recession would not last as long. We are absolutely in a very difficult period and more than any other time, we need someone that understands the gravity of the economy and can bring about a viable and equitable change. We can’t afford McCain/Palin, dumb and dumber, when we need our smartest people to guide this economic ship to safety.

PALIN RETURNED HOME TO 2,000 ALASKAN PROTESTERS WHO CHEERFULLY CHANTED "O-BAM-AH.

Gov. Sarah Palin returned home to 2,000 protesters outside the Anchorage library who wanted to correct the widespread impression that the Last Frontier endorses her candidacy.

"Last week this was just ten women sitting around talking about this perception that all of Alaska supports Sarah Palin. We apparently hit a nerve and started a movement,"

A sense of festival obtained. There was a woman in a polar bear suit representing "Polar Bear Moms Say: No Palin." Drivers on 36th Avenue saw a little girl waving a sign "Don't Ban My Books."

"My mom is from Alaska. She's a working mother. She's good looking," said Nolan. "So she seems to be qualified to be vice president."

Sarah Palin Protesters Held Signs Reading:

Bush In A Skirt
Palin She Be Failin
Jesus Was a Community Organizer
Palin: Thanks But No Thanks
Smearing Alaska's Good Name One Scandal @ a Time
Candidate To Nowhere
Rape Kits Should Be Free
Voted For Her Once: Never Again!
Community Organizers are the Real Patriots
Barbies for War
I Shall Not Be Pandered To
Give Palin Your Vote AND Your Draft Age Child
Sarah Palin: So Far Right She's Wrong
Alaska Is Not Frisco
Coat Hangers for McCain
Sarah Palin, Undoing 150 Years of American Feminism
Hockey Mama for Obama (on a hockey stick)

McCain / Palin are rejected for their anti-women stance and votes against Women Rights

PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE PRESIDENTIAL CHOICES

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, and its a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer,
become President of the Harvard Law Review,
create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters,
spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,
spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people,
become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee,
spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13
million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign
Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees,
you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years
on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less
than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000
people, and cook caribou/grizzly/wolf stew, then you're qualified to become the country's second
highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters,
all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress,
and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month,
you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including
the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only,
with no other option in sex education in your state's school system
while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm
to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family,
your family's values don't represent America's.

If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction
and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and
once was a member of a group that advocated: the secession of Alaska from the USA,
your family is extremely admirable.

McCain / Palin are rejected for their anti-women stance and votes against Women Rights

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER BROWN SUPPORTS BARACK OBAMA

LONDON - BRITISH PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN voiced support for UNITED STATES DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA, saying he would help Americans struggling with an economic downturn.

In a move seen by some British media as a break with a political convention requiring foreign leaders to remain neutral ahead of US elections, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER BROWN praised MR. OBAMA as a fellow “progressive politician” who would help ordinary Americans in tough times. With eight weeks to go before the presidential election, MR. OBAMA and his Republican rival John McCain are neck-and-neck in domestic opinion polls.

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER BROWN described the race for the White House as “electrifying” and said: “It is the DEMOCRATS who are generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times.”

“To help prevent people from losing their home, BARACK OBAMA has proposed a Foreclosure Prevention Fund to increase emergency pre-foreclosure counselling, and help families facing repossession,” he wrote in an article in The Monitor magazine, a monthly political publication.

2008 UNITED STATES DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL RACE

DEMOCRAT HARVARD LAW VS. GOP REPUBLICAN D STUDENTS

OBAMA OF HARVARD LAW AND PRESIDENT OF HARVARD LAW REVIEW
BIDEN OF SYRACUSE LAW

MCCAIN OF NAVY ACADEMY LAST PLACE D STUDENT
PALIN OF MOOSE COLLEGE

GOP Republican Wall Street SRO (Self Regulatory Organization) Robber Baron Supercapitalism Is Down And Will No Longer Rob the U.S. Treasury and American People

THEY ARE ALL GOP REPUBLICAN OOOOOIIIIILLLLL MILLIONAIRES AND OIL STOCKHOLDERS

GOP REPUBLICAN OOOOOIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLL IS THE NEW CRACK
GOP REPUBLICAN OOOOOIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLL IS THE NEW CRACK
GOP REPUBLICAN OOOOOIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLL IS THE NEW CRACK

CAN YOU SAY GOP REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, ROB OUR U.S. TREASURY, AND SPECULATE FOR OBSCENELY HIGH PROFIT RETURNS ON WALL STREET OIL STOCKS

WAKE UP AMERICA, BECAUCE THE WORLD ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT THE CRIMINAL GOP REPUBLICAN PARTY OF CONSPIRATORS

NATIONALIZE U.S. OIL FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE AS A VITAL RESOURCE

AMERICA AND AMERICANS FIRST

NO MORE GOP REPUBLICAN WALL STREET OOOOOIIIIILLLLL SPECULATION AND FRAUD AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

IF YOU SAY THAT YOU LOVE AMERICA, THEN PROVE IT AND STOP THE GOP REPUBLICAN RAIDERS UPON OUR U.S. TREASURY AND OUTSOURCING OF U.S. JOBS

GOP Republican Wall Street Get Rich Quick By Robbing America Treasury Wild Speculators Created The Enormous National Debt, So Make Them Pay For It And Balance Our Budget.
GOP Republican Wall Street Supercapitalism Speculators Have Committed Treason Against Our Country.

Who would you trust to get us out of this financial mess?
A. A former POW who graduated 897 out of 899 students and can't use a computer.
B. Former beauty queen, weathergirl and mayor of a 6000 person town in Alaska.
C. An Ivy league professor who graduated from Harvard U.

All eyes will be on the economy over the next 4 weeks. In the financial markets, many people will be paying attention to Washington Mutual, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, and large-to-middle size banks in general as well as the unemployment numbers and GDP. The federal budget deficit will of course increase and large estimates at it will appaul people.

Obama and Biden need to keep hammering McCain as being out-of-touch and having a similiar plan to Bush that got us in this mess. It is evident by the McCain surrogates gaffes, first McCain "invented" Blackberry and sedcond McCain/Palin aren't able to run a company will just compound the McCain campaign playing in defense mode over the next 4 weeks.

We are only 8 days away from the first debate between Obama and McCain with topic, of all things, being national security.

Welcome news comrades! We the People are now We the Owners. The People's Insurance Company, formerly known as AIG, was saved for the time being from the forces of capitalism by the new Union of Republican Socialists, formerly known as the GOP. Somewhere in the great beyond, the ghost of Karl Marx is grinning while the spirit of Adam Smith forks over the one dollar bet with an invisible hand:

"In a move aimed at averting a new global economic shock, the US Federal Reserve agreed an unprecedented 85-billion-dollar rescue loan for American International Group. The deal, sealed late Tuesday, saved AIG from collapse and gave the US government a 79.9 percent stake in the insurance behemoth."

Now that the People own a major insurance company, it's fair to ask how the People's Insurance Company, along with the People's Mortgage Companies and the People's Investment Banks, will benefit the People who Own them. Can we expect lower premiums, equity sharing, and corporate perks for our hundreds of billions of dollars? Should we start checking our mailbox for dividend checks? Who gets paid first, claimants, bondholders, stockholders, or we the new taxpayer owners?

We the Owners, want to know, and the Union of Socialist Republicans better damn well tell us, fast.

Well, I have to say that if McCain's campaign is undermined by these economic problems, it's his fault. These bank & insurer failures have been looming all year.

We've been teetering into and out of the probability that there would be some major economic upheaval before Nov. 4 and he wasn't ready. The fact that it took him 2 days to get a good policy and program statement together, cost him an enormous amount of credibility while his aides ran around making gaffes and he was hacked at freely by Obama.

It's economic stupidity if McCain didn't prepare for this happening, and the fact that he continued to hug Gramm and Gramm's ideas in this economic climate, when Gramm is representative of everything that went wrong, shows that he is indeed kind of clueless economically.

It's just incomprehensible that McCain got caught flat-footed and without real ideas to beat Obama to the press with, given that this is his big vulnerability. I expected it from Obama, and it's unsurprising that he's full of bullsh**. But McCain was more vulnerable to attacks over the economy and his Gramm-like utterances just made him more of a target.

Obama did no better, but he didn't have to. And even Obama would know better than to cling to Gramm.

If McCain loses, he blew it by not being prepared on his economic weakness front, after anyone really strategic would have been able to expect that there would be a high probability of a meltdown this year.

Damn right. And he has the nerve to turn his "fundamentals" comment around and pretend that he was only referencing American workers all this time? Forget September 15th, McCain's been saying this BS for quite a while.

It's also a real gem how all of his surrogates now suddenly say the same thing, making the Democrats look like they don't care about the American worker. What useless deception!

The only exception is the failure of a CEO, Carly Fiorina, who is MIA because she dirtily introduced doubt to her pre-packaged suckup interviews! ha!

You suggest that McCain's only hope is to focus the campaign on character: I find that laughable. McCain has sold out on every principle he ever claimed in the course of this campaign and violated every promise he made to run a clean, principled campaign...

How does being a POW help us in this economic crisis? McLame may rail against the 'greedy' wall st CEOs, but the truth none of them actually broke the law thanks to his buddy Phil Gramm. McLame has not offered ONE single solution that he intends to do things differently but pursue the same failed Bush policies. Worse he picks up a candidate former mayor of Wasilla, who probably never saw an ATM, let alone use one, prior to 2006. How will McLame fix this mess?

So was McCain against regulation before he was in favor of it, or since he doesn't know much about economics doesn't he know?
Maybe he should get a copy of the book Palin is reading, Economics for Dummies?

In recent weeks, John McCain and the Republican Party have blatantly and without any shame adopted the Democratic campaign theme of “change”. It should be evident to an objective observer that Bush 43 and now McCain and Pailin are mere puppets to the true Republican national party leaders who control their strings. Cheney is one of the few of that inner cabal that have been calling the shots since the Nixon administration. They are in fact a continuation of the Nixon and Ford presidencies with only a disruption during the Carter and Clinton years. Bush 41( Head of the RNC during Nixon, former head of the CIA,VP to Reagan, and president is probably the real leader of this political Cosa Nostra if not a equal partner of this power sharing musical chairs game. His right and left hands have been Dick Cheney(former Sec.of Defense of Bush 41, former White House Chief of staff for Ford) and the other is Donald Rumsfeld(former Sec. of Defense for Ford and Bush 43,former special envoy to the Middle East during Reagan). Another member of this group, more likely a captain if not a full blown boss himself is James Baker (former C.O.S of Reagan, former Under Sec. of Commerce for Ford, former C.O.S and Sec of State for Bush 41, former Sec. of Treasury for Reagan, former chief legal advisor to Bush 43). Another captain or free lance enforcer is Karl Rove a college drop out and campaign manager for both Bush 41 and 43, also for Phil Gram who is McCain’s economic advisor.
Lets look at McCain’s staff of change.
On July 2, 2008, Steve Schmidt was given "full operational control" of McCain's campaign. Steve Schmidt prior to this was a top aide to Dick Cheney and a protégé to Karl Rove. Another advisor is Charles R. Black worked for Ronald Reagan's two Presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980 and he was a senior political adviser to the 1992 re-election campaign of George H.W. Bush. Another advisor is Randy Scheunemann. He was project director for the Project for the New American Century. A neo-conservative think tank founded by non other than Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bill Kristol and others in 1996. Other signatories to this group reads like a who’s who of the last 8 years of the republican administration.
These people have never cared about small town america or “values” All they care about is war profiteering. Many of the signatories have never served in the military. Cheney and Rove both dodged the draft. Look at the statement of principles by the PNAC. Rumsfeld was a good friend of Saddam Huessin in the 80’s Cheney didn’t want Nelson Mandela free. These are the real puppet masters, they throw out the talking points about the left of being elitist and not caring about middle america and these same guys other than Rove have advanced degrees and are worth no less than 10 million dollars. People who support them need to extricate their heads out of Limbaugh and Hannity’s asses and see what is really happening to them. McCain is not his own man he confuses stories of his real life with a book he read “The Gulag Archipelago", in which a fellow prisoner - not a guard - silently drew a cross in the dirt with a stick.” An ironic twist to all this is Eliot A. Cohen, a signatory to the PNAC "Statement of Principles", responded in The Washington Post: "There is no evidence that generals as a class make wiser national security policymakers than civilians. George C. Marshall, our greatest soldier statesman after George Washington, opposed shipping arms to Britain in 1940. His boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with nary a day in uniform, thought otherwise. Whose judgment looks better?"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/2581086/John-McCain-accused-of-plagiarising-Wikipedia-for-speeches.html. Even if you don’t like Obama there is no-way a sane person can want this continued blatant fleecing of our Nation.
Thes are all verifiable facts and can be found just with a google searches.
Other than the ultra affluent, how can anyone support the Republican Party? When will small town America realize that they are being duped into supporting the ultra-affluent agenda? The talking points of the right are so hypocritical that it becomes laughable. The red meat of the right is the so called Main stream Media as if Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. are not part of it. They demean celebrity status, however they tout one of their greatest presidents(Reagan) was an actor. They say they are the party of patriotism, yet many of the upper echelon of the party have never served, i.e. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Baker, Reagan. They say that they care about "Main Street" USA but only bail out the Whales of Wall Street. Yet small town America eat this tripe every year. They don't care about religion unless it can be used to stir up the base, nor science or technology unless there is a buck to be made. Small town America takes pride on its freedom but yet don't realize that over time we are becoming less free, ie wire tapping and other forms of domestic surveillance. They demean people of intelligence because they know many people of small town America don't have degrees and use it at a fake issue and call people who spent time in academia as elitist when many on the right serve on university boards and have part-time professorships. They say they are against affirmitive action but yet celebrate mediocrity, Bush43 and McCain graduating at the bottom of their classes. Who both came from already well established families and had all the opportunities and connections to excel. Why does small town America believes this is the party for them? Christian conservatives seem to the be the first ones who want to go to war and bomb someone before any diplomacy is tried. Why can't small town America and Christian conservatives realize they are being used as pawns just as much the Islamic fundamentalist are. Islamic fundamentalist come from small town Middle East and given the same kind of talking points as the evangelicals. They want prayer in school, no choice available to women, and believe to the core that their ideas about worship and country are the best. Wake up small town America you are being duped.
Talking about who is more patriotic, symbols, lipstick and wearing pins are nothing more than distractions to the real issue of how a few select group of people have held power almost continuously for over 30 years. Yes the left has their own political power groups but none have been so effective at pushing forward an agenda that is fundamentally bad for the U.S. and in a larger view the entire world. I stress again the now defunct PNAC and the AIPAC have been slowly pushing us closer to another World War. Bush41 and et al have been doing this and no one calls them on it. Every Republican administration has basically the same people recycled since Nixon. Just do a little research and you will see that these people are just pushing this agenda of some kind of Pax Americana and not taking into account that maybe other nations of the world might not like that and if not bomb them.
Many people who support the Republican party, really need to read "1984" by George Orwell and see how we as nation have been inching closer to that type of society. People think this story is about a communist society, but it is more about how a society is kept in a constant state of fear in order for the ruling class to stay in control. Doublespeak, patriotism to the point of frenzy, censorship, erosion of civil liberties (not respecting the Constitution) is happening right in front of us. The consolidation of government (the executive branch has never been more powerful than ever, gridlocked legislature with only two parties for representation, a judiciary that just kowtows to the executive branch). No real independent journalism. Cameras placed on every street corner. This may sound like delusional conspiracy stuff, but I implore people to research for themselves to really see what is happening to them. People think this could never happen here in the U.S. but all this has already happening, slowly, incrementally all under the guise of "keeping America safe"
I posted these comments on other political blogs and I send them to you to use them or do with them as you please. I truly hope that Senator Obama will be able to stem this tide of fascism and break this cycle of fear that has been slowly eroding the American dream.

Did I mention he is a war hero? That should be enough. If not Sarah will help. Ok, just kidding. Now that the Sarah fluff is dying, the issues are taking hold. After the mess Bush got us in, he should not be even close in the polls. But then again, a close race is great for the ratings for the cable news shows.

A good article overall - but one caveat needs to be made:
"Voters would not give Democrats a third term after the Clinton presidency, despite a robust economy and a nation at peace."

In keeping with the media's focus on being "results oriented" - the final outcome of the 2000 election results misleadingly colors descriptions of the situation.

But for the "butterfly ballot" in Palm Beach Gore would have taken office with a clear win. Even as it was, with such factors as improper disenfranchisement of thousands of Florida voters through error-prone role purging thrown in, the results of the election were a virtual statistical tie. It took the Republican "thumb on the scale" through control of the Florida electoral apparatus and the Supreme Court to tilt Florida, and the election to Bush.

We know how Alaska is a hot bed of terrorists. Now McCain is dispatching a former top U.S. terrorism prosecutor from New York, Ed O'Callaghan, to assist Palin's personal lawyer working to derail or delay a pending ethics investigation in Alaska. The probe, known as "Troopergate," is examining whether the governor abused her power by trying to remove her former brother-in-law as a state trooper. We cannot allow terorists to harass this incredible patriot!

Grade ... you have a nice name ... also my mother's name ... But, why should I believe that Barack Obama cannot deliver on most of his promises. The Republican Pary has always floundered on the matter of the economy. They the fat cats always seem to do well ... but the middle class heading in the direction of being poor always bear the brunt of an economic melt down. Dreams are dashed ... and always among the middle class. The poor have given up long ago on the American Dream and most rich lack moral conscience when it comes to being rich and caring for those who have not. This great divide is a moral issue ... and I don't think John McCain is position to have empathy with these folks. I find it so interesting how a black man who worked hard to achieve what he did is viewed as elitist ... I see that as the American Dream. History was never on Obama's side ... and his story inspires lots of Americans ... and that change alone will create excitement in the market place ... the global economy. So, not only do we need to bring the troops home, we also need to bring back the good times ... a good economy.

As an Obama supporter, I would HOPE that the current economic disaster-in-the-making would send voters scuttering away from McCain/Palin. (And I say that while also feeling profoundly disheartened by the economic misery that seems to be descending on this country.)

As Balz notes, McCain has zero-reputation as an economic heavyweight, and he's burdened with a long-standing reputation as a cut-tax, deregulate Reagan/Bush Republican. He's close to Phil Gramm, who helped bring all this financial mess upon the country. By and large, considering his seven houses and $100-million wife, he's also known in the country as an out-of-touch rich guy. And then there's the ghost of the Keating scandal, which the Obama campaign has so far refused to reopen (largely because it would give McCain a chance to rerun his 1980s mea culpas and reiterate what a born-again reformer/maverick he's become). Sarah Palin gives him no help in this.

And yet...I really wonder how much the American public is paying attention to McCain's flimsy economic credentials. I really do fear that his boasts about being the tough sheriff who rides into town and cleans out the saloon--with Two-Gun Sarah at his side--is going to cadge him a lot of votes, even as the American people quake in their boots about their jobs and their mortages.

Especially if Obama continues to talk like a learned professor about regulation and markets and other intelligent things.

It's going to be all too easy for McCain and Palin to posture as rough-tough cleaner-uppers--Teddy Roosevelt and all that--instead of having their economic records scrutinized. And of course don't forget the real reasons why so many of our fellow citizens are voting for Palin and McCain: they want a Bible-thumping, gun-toting, gay-bashing, abortion-suppressing Christian WHITE guy in the White House. And the more they are frightened by the economic turmoil engulfing the land, the more they will cling to their piety.

I hope Obama/Biden can talk sense to the American people. But I'm afraid that the people are going toa vote on the basis of their prejudices, probably seeing in all the economic turmoil more signs that the Antichrist--and the Rapture--are at hand.

You see, as it turns out... the McCain camp were actually referring to John's contribution to the development of the 'blackberry' ... not the 'Blackberry'.

Yup, seems Mr. McCain played a hand in the development of the time honored favorite fruit. As it turns out John was an early proponent for genetically modified fruit and while working alongside a band of Flemish monks visiting Scotland in the early 13th century John accidentally spliced a Mungleberry fruit stem into a Benninberry stem (related to modern Alderberry).

Low and behold - a star was born - the 'blackberry' and John was celebrated for centuries around the abbey. Indeed - the breakfast gruel was never the same !

John McCain proposes setting up a committee to investigate the economic meltdown that will resemble the 9/11 commission. Yet as we now know, much information was kept from the 9/11 Commission, and the Bush administration did not exactly jump to follow through on its suggestion. The analogy probably accurately predicts what McCain would do should he become president: nothing.

Maybe people are starting to google 'McCain Keating Neil Bush and getting something like this from godlikeproductions:

"We are reading about past accounting scandals and frauds, so we can understand the mistakes that auditors made and what happened that allowed the fraud to occur. Look at what I found in my textbook regarding a company called Lincoln Savings and Loan:

The most serious charges leveled at Keating involved allegations of influence peddling. Keating contributed heavily to the election campaigns of five prominent senators, including John Glenn and John McCain. These five senators, who became known as the Keating Five, met with federal banking regulators and allegedly lobbied for favorable treatment for Lincoln Savings and Loan...

Keating made the following remarks during a press conference: "One question, among the many raised in recent weeks, has to do with whether my financial support in any way influenced several political figures to take up my cause. I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so."

McCain lobbied for this guy to get favorable treatment to help him perpetrate his fraud. What Keating essentially did was create fake profits for Lincoln Savings and Loan, which allowed him to take REAL money out of the corporation. "The gains recorded by Lincoln on its real estate transactions allowed ACC [Keating's company] to withdraw huge sums of cash from the savings and loan, funds that were actually federally insured deposits."

So essentially, they were stealing money from the government. McCain seems to be big on eliminating pork and wasteful spending, yet he helped this guy steal millions from the taxpayers?

Oh, and there's more. Look at who else is involved:

Keating also hired Alan Greenspan to represent Lincoln before the FHLBB shortly before Greenspan was appointed to the powerful position of chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In a legal brief submitted to the FHLBB, Greenspan reported that Lincoln's management team was "seasoned and expert" and that the savings and loan was a "financially strong institution that presents no foreseeable risk to depositors or the government."

The textbook emphasizes those points because they had just spent the previous several pages talking about how Lincoln was doomed to failure because of all these fraudulent activities and fake profits. Not only that, but Greenspan calls the management "seasoned and expert" when in reality that was a lie. Keating handpicked his son to be the president of Lincoln Savings and Loan, an impressive job title with a salary of $1 million. What were his qualifications? Well, he was a high school graduate and college dropout who was working as a busboy before he became president."

___Add that to the second bridge to second nowhere in Palin's peach of a state, and it starts to look like there's something serious about their understanding of their role in the economy.

Actually, the REAL problem is that McCain is a charter member of the "Keating 5" Lincoln Savings and Loan influence peddling scandal. The 1980's banking legislation that removed regulation and caused the savings and loan debacle, and subsequent taxpayer bailout.

MCCAIN IS ONE OF THE POLITICIANS WHO INVENTED DEREGULATING THE BANKING AND FINANCE INDUSTRY, AND THIS ALL HAPPENED ON HIS WATCH.

Do you think I trust him to craft a solution that requires 180 degree swing in his core political beliefs? Do you think I find his community college graduate VP able to craft a solution to this global finance problem?

MCCAIN is speaking at BILL CLINTONS GLOBAL INITATIVE FOUNDATION. That means BILL wants to help MCCAIN win 2008 now and MCCAIN will help HILLARY win 2012.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

DEMS DO NOT TRUST OBAMA MILLION PROMISES THAT HE CAN'T KEEP.
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No let's trust McClame, he was against regulation before he was for it. The economy is fundamentally sound. America is a bunch of whiners. The economic woes are in your heads. And most of all, his SENIOR ADVISOR SAYS "McCstain and Palin not fit to run a company!

DO YOU KNOW HOW STUPID YOU SOUND? Please stop blogging like you're a dem ok? If you persist, please at least make an attempt to sound intelligent.

Mcclame is giving the whitehouse to Obama, your comment just shows how desperate you are. Too late but your boy put his foot in his mouth. His running mate should just shut the fook up! She is idiot incarnate.

Most of the media need to stop being pansies for Rick Davis. The polls don't take certain things into consideration anyway. Obama will win by a landslide. McCain is on the defense because he was branded as a liar along with his parter Palin. Karl Rove knew the "liar brand" was sticking to Palin and McCain and started pandering to you guys, the media and you took the bait. Now he and Rick wants the controlled focus back on Palin.
You guys take Americans for granted and you think there're stupid. The biggest protest thus far against any candidate was held in Alaska. Women, demos and repubs came out against Palin and BBC had the story before any network or news paper. An NBC affiliate KTUU in Alaska did the story and it wasn't even shown on the network. You can't believe everything on the internet but I thank God for it. It fills in the blanks while you guys spend valuabe resources on lipstick and pigs.
The "Liar Brand" on Palin- McCain is working.

The two reasons a know-nothing, bereft of ideas flat-lined campaign like his can continue to exist despite all of its dishonesty, ignorance and mistakes is that the mainstream media on the McCain tire-swing does not call the campaign on it and about half of the voters in this country appear to like living under authoritarian rulers who lie, cheat and steal.

The only thing McCain has proven adept at is following the Bush playbook. When you have nothing of substance to say, lie your a*s off. The base will follow, and so will the idiots. Worked for Bush, didn't it?

What Phil Gramm did leading to the Enron collapse, and what he did again leading up to the current financial meltdown, he wants to do yet again to your healthcare. Remember the fawning coverage that was being peddled on that one?

"[E]conomic conservatives should take heart. McCain's chief economic adviser - and perhaps his closest political friend - is the ultimate pure play in free market faith, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. If McCain follows Gramm's counsel, and most of his current positions are vintage Gramm indeed, his policies as president would represent not just a sharp departure from the Bush years, but an assault on government growth that Republicans have boasted about, but failed to achieve, for decades. [...]"

"On the economy, McCain's most daring manifesto is his healthcare plan. Not surprisingly, it bears the Gramm imprint. In fact, McCain has been heeding Gramm's "power-to-the-consumer" approach for more than a decade. The two senators bonded when they linked arms to fight Hillary Clinton's ill-fated healthcare program in 1993. "We couldn't get any press coverage in Washington, DC, so we traveled all over the country, to the regional media markets," says Gramm. In 150 meetings at hospitals and clinics, McCain and Gramm relentlessly pounded the Clinton plan, helping fire the voter outrage that killed the plan in 1994."
.http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/18/news/newsmakers/tully_gramm.fortune/index.htm
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Yep. McCain and Gramm were prime movers behind killing health insurance reform in the 1990's -- but no worries. They've got a great grasp of the current situation. According to McCain and Gramm, the problem is that we need more deregulation, and some tax rebates and stuff. You know, just like for everything else.

Gramm, you may recall, famously blamed the current economic woes on Americans being a "nation of whiners". You'll be happy to know that here, too, the McCain camp is consistent: healthcare costs are your own damn fault, America.

In July, McCain's healthcare architect Al Hubbard (an architect of Bush's failed healthcare proposals, which have now adopted by McCain in a fit of the usual non-maverickiness) laid the blame for healthcare costs on Americans "consuming" health care like "caviar":

"[W]e consume it as if it was free...It’s interesting, if you would think about, the employers rather than providing health care insurance they provided food insurance. So every time you go to the grocery store you just take out your food insurance card, you give it to the cashier, she scans it, and you’re outta there. Pretty soon, you would start buying caviar, expensive steak, and you start buying more than you need..."
.http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/07/22/mccain-caviar/
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Yep. You consumers are being spoiled -- you want to be too healthy. You want too much care. A lot of people live rich, full lives with, say, blinding cataracts, or with a piece of construction rebar lodged in their skulls -- why do you want to be such a prima donna about it? So you're having a heart attack -- you don't have time to shop around a little, get some quotes"?

Makes me feel sheepish, now, for taking all that expensive medicine just so I can "breathe".

Of course, we can go further still. There's no problem that conservatism can't solve by simply altering the fabric of reality until the problem goes away. This is known as the "lampshade principle", as discovered by George W. Bush: when something is bad is happening, stick a lampshade over your head so you can't see it anymore. Problem solved!

Yet another McCain healthcare advisor, John Goodman:

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care."
"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."
.http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-Uninsured_27bus.ART.State.Edition2.4dce428.html
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Given what's happened to everything else this crew has touched -- and Gramm, especially, seems to have the reverse-Midas touch to an uncanny degree -- I'm almost looking forward to the idea of John McCain and Phil Gramm possibly being in charge of my health insurance. It would be nothing if not exciting.

Heck, with Gramm's "magic touch", I'm confident we can all look forward to a resurgence of the Black Death.

What's up with the press not pressing the Keating Five issue? It seems quite relevant to me - more relevant than some of the "lip stick on a pig" issues the press focuses on Obama. In case you've forgotten what Keating Five is:

Back to the history books, folks. I have yet to hear a journalist utter the name, "Herbert Hoover" who was president during the great stock market meltdown of 1929. Hoover was the first to assert the soundness of the economy, even as it was evaporating around him. Unemployment soared to 20%, and millions had life savings wiped out overnight. (Does any of this sound familiar, folks?) The economy remained in the tank throughout most of the 1930s. A direct result of this disaster was the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Subsequent reforms included federal insurance on bank deposits, social security, and numerous agriculture and jobs programs. They were long range solutions that did only a little to ameliorate the immediate pain. The economy only began to recover as the USA re-armed for World War II. We don't have that luxury today. Another World War will be the end of civilization as we know it.

Herbert Hoover: He didn't invent the vacuum cleaner; he sucked the life out of the American economy. John McCain would do the same.

Looking back at history, McCain appears to be Herbert Hoover incarnation! With the economy in a cliffhanger, McCain proclaimed yesterday that “the economic fundamentals are strong” and boosted his anti-regulation credentials before he backpedaled, of course. Hoover took similar stand at the beginning of the great depression which lasted over 10 years! I hope and pray that this recession would not last as long. We are absolutely in a very difficult period and more than any other time, we need someone that understands the gravity of the economy and can bring about a viable and equitable change. We can’t afford McCain/Palin, dumb and dumber, when we need our smartest people to guide this economic ship to safety.

McCain is invited to speak at the Bill Clinton Global Initiative Foundation. This is the nod from the Clintons that they will help McCain get elected in 2008 and McCain will help Hillary get elected 2012.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Democrats do not trust Obama will deliver on all of his millions of promises. Obama just promises everybody everything to get the presidency.

If you read Jeffrey Goldberg's excellent piece on McCain in the new Atlantic, one fact stands out clearly. McCain's stance on the war is inviolate--it involves what for him are principles of honor that stretch back immediately and directly to his own experiences in the Vietnam war, and to those of his father in World War II. Just one example of many in the first-rate article:

"I told Swindle [a cellmate and friend of McCain's] that McCain had argued to me that he doesn’t think about Vietnam overly much when he thinks about the wars of today.

“'Bulls--t,' Swindle said. 'He’ll say Vietnam didn’t affect him, that he doesn’t think about it, that he’s aloof from it. But I see it. It’s there.'”

This is the issue on which McCain is inflexible, certain, fully invested, passionate.

It is equally clear that as a result, he views all other issues as malleable, political issues--stances that can be easily taken, and easily changed, tactically-- in order to win a campaign and thus deal with the issue that, to him, matters.

This is utterly clear in his choice of Palin, where his Vietnam-and-since cynicism about political necessities is manifest--one of feeding the bread and circuses desire of the electorate, giving them, so easily fooled, as they were so easily fooled by the media in Vietnam, what they need, in order to be able to deal with the important issue.

The choice of a remarkably unqualified Vice Presidential choice is simply a political necessity. The attitude towards the public, and the media, in this choice, as in many of the public representations and statements of his campaign, is one of an extraordinary, world-weary, cynicism: Feed the beast with whatever fantasies and half-truths it takes. The fundamentals of the economy are sound. We'll take care of it later.

Goldberg:

"In my conversations with McCain, however, he never appeared greatly troubled by his shifts and reversals. It’s not difficult to understand why: tax policy, or health care, or even off-shore oil drilling are for him all matters of mere politics, and politics calls for ideological plasticity. It is only in the realm of national defense, and of American honor—two notions that for McCain are thoroughly entwined—that he becomes truly unbending."

This is no doubt rooted in McCain's eternal certainties, drummed in by three generations of such certainty. And there is no doubt strength and decency--as well as these "family values"--that drive this commitment to an ideological core.

The question is this: Do we need another president with such a core of ideological inflexibility, rigidity and unwillingness for self-reflection, linked to a long past conflict--and who is willing to resort to half-truths, deceptions, and distortions in its service?

I think ultimately, the financial crisis can be attributed to a single factor that has been at the root of all major crisis - Human nature. In an article analyzing the Lehman Brothers collapse, Tom Raum of the AP opines, "People bought homes they couldn't afford. Investors eagerly bought mortgage-backed securities they didn't understand. Human nature was a guiding force in markets that were first driven by greed and then shaken by fear."

While age old economic theories work well against macro market behaviors, regulation that is informed by the erratic probabilities of human motivations is a new school that offers some new solutions to our current situation. Obama's economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, is an economist who has been studying a branch of economics called behavioral economics...

It is easy to take McCain's claims that Obama offers "big government" and "more regulation" and reform at face value, but we need specifics. To protect the interests of investors, America does not need MORE regulation, but SMARTER regulation that factors in the chaotic nature of human behaviors. While McCain wants to set up a commission to study this problem...Obama and his advisors have ALREADY been studying this for a long time...and have applied some of this thinking into his plans.

This is the kind of economic firepower we can expect from an Obama administration...this is the kind of innovation that will take America to our next stage of growth. Can we really trust McCain, who has said he does not understand old economics, to even begin to understand his new era?

In a twisted sort of way I almost want McCain to win this election because four more years worth of failed Bush/McCain policies would for all intents and purposes be the end of the Republican party as we know it today. They would become the 4th party gadflies that they deserve to be.

The only question is, would this country survive it?

You people out there who live in economic downtrodden states like Ohio, Pa and Michigan, if you are stupid enough to vote for McCain this fall then you will deserve all of the continued economic hardship that you will get from a "President McCain"....

God fobid that something happend to Seator McCain. Life is just like that for all of us. Don't you want to hear your Rebublican VP talk to the people, discuss important issues, world issues. Do you not want to no something about your Hidden and protected possible, next President? I don't see any concern from anyone in your Country. Bless you all, from Canada.